Garth Marenghi’s

Incarcerat

www.hodder.co.uk
 About the Author

Garth Marenghi was born in the past, graduated from his local comprehensive (now bulldozed)
with some O levels in subjects. He taught for nine years at his local library reading group
before becoming a full-time horror writer. He has published numerous novels of terror (too
numerous to list, nay count), over five hundred short stories, and has edited thirty anthologies
of his own work, which have all received the Grand Master of Darkdom Award. He wrote,
directed and starred in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace for the Peruvian market, which
subsequently aired on Channel 4 and has not been repeated due to its radical and polemic
content. He commenced work on TerrorTome during the late 1980s, continued on it alone and
unaided by editors throughout the 1990s, and on into the early 2000s, then the mid-2000s, and
has only now found a publisher brave enough to unleash its chilling portendings. He now
continues this vision with Incarcerat. He is an honorary fellow.
 Also by Garth Marenghi:

Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome

 First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Coronet
An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Matthew Holness 2023

Map copyright © Alisdair Wood 2023

The right of Matthew Holness to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover Image: Joe Avery

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Hardback ISBN 9781399721882

ebook ISBN 9781399721899

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk
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 CONTENTS

Map

INTRODUCTION

PORTENTUM

ARABELLA MATHERS

THE RANDYMAN

GARTH MARENGHI’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

MATTHEW HOLNESS’ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOOTNOTES
INCARCERAT
/In'ka:serate/
noun
a being of superior power and intelligence shackled by physical, temporal
and/or spatial fetters.
Origin
Medieval Latin ‘in’ (into); ‘carcer’ (prison) > ‘incarcerare’ > ‘incarcerat’
(imprisoned) > mid-sixteenth century ‘incarcerate’ > Steen, Nick O. 1999,
Hell Off Earth ‘Incarcerat’ (n). Omega In Extremis.
 INTRODUCTION

My own incarceration began at around 9.25 a.m. on 22 September 1999 in

the lobby of a three-star hotel in Swansea (now two-star). I wasn’t
physically imprisoned there (though the place has certainly earned itself a
reputation over the years). Nor was I locked up, bound hand to foot,
gagged, pissed on or forced to slop out my own faecal matter by anyone at
that establishment. Those events came later, and were, as you will shortly
learn, largely self-administered.
But my self-imposed incarceration – an incarceration of the mind – began
on that particular morning, at the precise moment I was forced to report the
unclean and potentially hazardous state of my family’s room to what, for
want of a better term, I shall refer to as the hotel’s ‘concierge’. Though
‘tosspot’ is my preferred appellation.
The occasion was Conspiracon ’99, a one-off joint horror-SF event
organised in anticipation of the much-vaunted but ultimately disappointing
damp squib of a global apocalypse scheduled for the following year.FN1
Naively, I’d elected to take along my wife Pam and our eldest daughter,
then in her early teens, to show her (my daughter – not Pam, who knows
what I do and reads all my work whether she wants to or not) a little of the
public side of my profession. More crucially, my intention was to get her to
film me accepting my award for ‘Best Evisceral Puncturing’, so that I could
subsequently hawk it on VHS from my then ground-breaking website
page.FN2
Unfortunately, things had not gone well since our arrival the day before,
and my daughter,FN3 when she could wrestle her attention away from the
local shopping mall, had insisted I complain about the state of our facilities,
having discovered ‘eggs’ in the lining of our hotel bedding. This was no
surprise to me – there were always clutches of minute, unidentified sacs in
the sheets of this particular hotel, and I flat out refused to rock the boat,
given we’d been granted one of their cheapest rooms at a slightly reduced
rate and had already booked a weekend’s worth of exclusively curry-based
catering. Not only that, but I was the official ‘host’ for the convention, and
in this capacity had graciously agreed to part-subsidise my daughter’s
mandatory attendance fee.
I felt the least she could do was endure a few bouts of frenzied clawing in
the shank area in exchange for a token reduction. Yet there followed, as I
might well have predicted if I hadn’t been focused on demolishing my king-
size portion of mutton dal in a distant conference room somewhere below, a
long, dark night of female scritchrionics. Before I knew what was
happening, Pam was waking me roughly from sleep, resolutely forbidding
me to commence my much-anticipated cooked breakfast in the freshly
sluiced conference room, until I’d raised the matter of the affected sheets,
two of which no longer sported ‘eggs’ at all, I noted. Presumably owing to
an occurrence of nocturnal hatching.
It was while I was remonstrating audibly with the ‘concierge’, much to
the amusement of my fellow guest speakers currently enjoying their tepid
morning kormas, that I noticed my daughter had wandered off to a table by
the freshly ransacked snack dispensary and was calmly, yet quite brazenly,
reading a copy of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World.
Now I have great respect for the late Carl Sagan, if little or none for his
theories. I admire his exercise regime and commitment to meeting the
World Health Organization’s recommended intake of 25g of roughage per
day. I also like his anoraks. But as for Carl’s stance on the likely future
course of human evolution? Someone hold my goblet.
Look, I’ve read Carl Sagan.FN4 I’ve watched bits of that tedious pro-
gramme he did, best scrolled in small chunks on a streaming platformof
your choice if it ever deigns to flash up. Hell, I even agree with his views on
the human R-Complex (and have employed them extensively in this book).
But as for science leading the way forward in human evolution, as opposed
to superstition? Someone hold my other goblet.
Bottom line, friend. Superstition is our way out of this mess. How can
mankind ever truly progress until it learns to live with the horror of reality,
no matter how dark and twisted that might be? For this, in a nutshell, is
what we face as a species. And let me say now that I’m no conspiracy nut.
People aren’t lizards. They’re salamanders. Our Earth isn’t round, or flat.
It’s oblong. Clouds aren’t UFOS. Or UAPS. They’re UPOOS.FN5 And a
chilling yarn by yours truly ain’t no frivolous serving of exploitative trash.
My work reflects nothing less than reality itself.FN6 Truth is, pilgrim, my
oeuvre doth more for mankind than any amount of demonstrating the fourth
dimension via some primary-school classroom apparatus and an apple.
Or at least that’s what I thought.
For at this point I found myself engaged in a public debate with my own
daughter about bloody Carl Sagan in that hotel lobby, with a gathering of
jeering professional colleagues surrounding us, shoving her forward so we
might physically scrap. I will admit that I finally lost my temper and
cancelled her reservation entirely, turfing her out on to the streets of
Swansea with the instruction to ‘go slum it, sister’.
Then Pam told me – likewise, in front of everyone – that she wouldn’t
sanction such behaviour from a man still daubed with specks of ghee, and I
left the convention forthwith and went to live in rented accommodation.
And in that terrible, harsh period of loneliness and isolation, I freely
admit that I let myself go. Scorned personal hygiene. Slopped out instead of
flushed. Sheared my whole body in protest. Ate oatmeal.
Then, not having spoken to my nearest and dearest for two long days, I
finally picked up the copy of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World my
daughter had hurled violently at the back of my head, and read the damned
thing from top to tail.
Did I agree with Carl this time?
Read Incarcerat, friend, and you’ll find out.FN7

Garth Marenghi,
Grand High Revealerer,
Arch-Deniering of the Un-Truth,
Lord Apportioner o’ the Blaming.
Octember 2023
 PORTENTUM

(or, THE GOD SOCKET)

 CHAPTER ONE
‘Sole Survivor’

A black plume of smoke rose high over Stalkford Airport as another fuel
tank exploded. Air Traffic Controller Sly Pickens, a peripheral character
whom we won’t meet again in this story, flicked a big switch on the console
in front of him, signalling ground control to wave in a fresh fleet of
ambulances.
Flight SA13 had landed.
The front of the plane alone was intact, its rear fuselage having
disintegrated entirely upon impact. The blackened nose of the stricken
airbus lay at an angle on the gouged and scorch-marked runway, its
inflatable stairway buffeted in all directions by powerful gusts from the
evening’s unexpected and ultimately deadly August storm.
Though torrents of rain lashed hard against the strewn and scattered
wreckage, they did little to dispel the rising smoke and flames. Detached
seats and strewn luggage lay in shattered pieces as far as the eye could see,
glowing fiercely in the night like hot coals. What pieces remained of the
jumbo’s splintered interior lay crisp and blackened on the concrete like
burned, smoking chips in a giant oven tray. And if catapulted luggage were
the stricken plane’s metaphorical vegetable, then what remained of the
passengers themselves was its undigested crackling; a purplish brown
cluster of bubbling, charred body-meat, whose scent was borne upon the
whipping breeze like the unholiest of gravies.
Medics and firemen moved steadily through the wreckage, lighting
much-needed fags from the frazzled husks to steady their nerves, before
dousing what remained of the dead in industrial-strength extinguisher foam.
As they progressed gradually towards the twisted struts of the jumbo’s
melting galley, nobody glimpsed the small flurry of movement occurring
inside the plane’s teetering cockpit. No one spied the human figure forcing
its way through a smashed window in the main cabin, before clambering
sideways over the nose towards the jumbo’s crumpled left wing. The man,
for the figure wore trousers, was clothed in uniform, and although his shirt
was covered with flecks of blood and spattered jet fuel, there was no
mistaking the captain’s stripes on both shoulder lapels.
For this was the pilot of the downed airbus.
The sole survivor . . .
As the figure dropped to the floor of the runway from the bent wing and
collected his suitcase from a mangled food-trolley melting rapidly against
one of the Boeing’s vast, dislocated landing wheels, a nearby fireman
looked up from a smoking skull and nodded at him.
‘Evening, Nick.’
‘Evening, Steve,’ replied the pilot, still hardly believing that this was his
profession now, having worked primarily as a best-selling horror novelist
for the last thirty years. With a palpable air of nonchalance, he transferred
the single-breasted, Oxford Blue pilot’s blazer from his right arm and
tugged it on, elevating one of its padded collars over his head to shield his
smooth and smoky-topaz mane from the relentless rain.
‘Welcome to Stalkford Airport, Captain Steen,’ said one of the
paramedics, smiling wryly as he held out an object in his hand. ‘I think you
dropped this.’
The captain reached over and took back his pilot’s cap, which had
become dislodged from his head mid-crash and, like him, had miraculously
escaped any lasting damage from the plane’s catastrophic impact with the
ground and subsequent inferno. He winked at the medic, acknowledging the
man’s excellent display of dry wit amid trying circumstances, then popped
on the cap swiftly over his thick, lustrous hair and marched at a professional
pace towards the airport’s main building across the runway.
‘I’ll remember it next time,’ he called out behind him, as the rescue
crews continued with their work, the grim task of recovery destined to
occupy them, as always, long into the night.
Next time, reflected Nick Steen, former best-selling horror author turned
doomed airline pilot for Stalkford Airways, to himself.
Next time.
There was always next time.
For the circumstances of the horrific air accident Nick found himself
emerging from had once been nothing more real than a series of calamitous
events described within the pages of one of his own horror tomes. Published
more than twenty years earlier, The Portentor (or Portentoror for the US
edition) had recounted the chilling story of Captain Gary Tracker,
commercial air pilot and sole survivor of a devastating plane crash. Caught
in a supernatural time warp, Tracker is forced to endure a never-ending
cycle of near-identical aviation accidents from which he emerges
continually as sole survivor.
To make matters worse, each fresh air disaster is foretold uncannily in
Tracker’s mind via recurring portentums (hence The Portentor): an eerie
psychokinetic ability to ‘see’ future events before they happen. This has
somehow been engineered by Tracker’s initial crash, and with each fresh
accident only increases in intensity, meaning he’s soon caught in an endless
cycle of death-prefiguration followed by near-death experience, followed by
death-prefiguration followed by near-death experience, etc. It’s a total
nightmare.
The book’s cover had depicted the sinister image of a man’s face – half
pilot, half skull – with a jumbo jet spiralling in a terrifying death-arc
directly through a hole in the protagonist’s nose, splitting the forehead
above it in two while igniting both eye sockets with subtly rendered bursts
of exploding jet fuel. These symbolised in visual terms the ‘pupils of death’
that would ultimately curse the book’s hero with uncanny psychic foresight.
For, as Tracker gradually discovers, he’s not just developing a psychic
ability to foretell events, but also one that can influence them as well. And
with that devastating realisation comes yet another, even more devastating,
revelation: that Gary Tracker has somehow emerged from this never-ending
cycle of disasters as a God among men, and not a particularly benevolent
one.
It was a dense cluster of truly frightening premises. And with Nick’s
name rendered solidly in embossed gold lettering above the cover’s central
image, and the book’s title displayed prominently below it in electric blue,
The Portentor had proved to be one of Nick’s most terrifying novels, and on
the page it should have remained. Yet now, owing to Nick Steen’s
imagination having escaped from his mind, seeping out continuously from
his head for several months following his accidentally opening a portal to
another dimension (having once engaged in shady physical relations with a
cursed typewriter), the book in question had suddenly sprung to life. Now
Nick Steen himself was caught up in the midst of a destructive portentory
maelstrom unleashed by his own writing.
 Nick Steen now was Gary Tracker in all but name. And with each fresh
air accident and terrifying brush with death, deepening psychokinetic
abilities were gradually manifesting themselves inside Nick’s own brain.
Not just an ability to foresee the future, but additional ones as well.
Like boiling an egg using only the power of his mind. Currently, the
process took over four hours, meaning it was ultimately more practical to
use a pan. But who knew what other terrifying psychic powers might soon
awaken inside his brain?
And in that, Nick fervently believed, lay Stalkford’s ultimate salvation.
For if he could somehow continue to endure these nightly plane crashes,
knowing he’d ultimately and miraculously walk away from them uninjured,
sole survivor every time, then maybe, just maybe, he could develop those
latent psychic abilities enough to become the all-powerful psychic force
depicted in his original novel. Then he could at long last turn the table on
his rampaging demonic visions. Defeat them once and for all, thus saving
Stalkford, and the surrounding counties, from ultimate destruction. Plus get
the egg-boiling down to one minute, max.
Nick blew a disbelieving whistle from his lips, awestruck by the sheer
magnitude of the task that lay ahead. Before all that, he needed to relax.
Recharge. Cop some badly needed Zs.
He slapped his forehead suddenly, remembering. He had a date with
Julia, damn it. Former air stewardess, now Female Air Traffic Control
Assistant, whose surname he couldn’t remember and whose life he’d saved
from premature death by firing her aggressively from her first job for
serving him tepid coffee on the morning of that initial disastrous Flight
SA13 to Bogotá.
Nick smiled, recalling the memory. He wondered where he could take
Julia tonight, before realising, with sudden regret, that he’d agreed to let her
make that decision. No doubt it meant a prolonged bout of late-night
shopping in the duty-free lounge before any hint of petting could
commence. Perhaps he should just fire her again . . .
Breaking free from his thoughts, Nick saluted the team of arriving Air
Accident Investigators, high-fived Marcus, their accompanying Critical
Incident Officer, and passed through a door into the main terminal building.
He took an escalator up to the main concourse and followed the exclusive
crew lane through to customs.
 ‘Nice flight?’ asked Customs Officer Fran Locker, whom Nick was also
dating, though not as frequently as he was Julia.
‘It was,’ Nick joked.
‘Maybe some deeply probing questions would soften you up?’ she said,
cracking her knuckles. ‘How about a brief, bruising body search in one of
the security cells?’
‘Not tonight, Fran,’ Nick said, knowing that such a physical parley would
only instigate another public catfight between her and Julia, which Nick
would no doubt have to referee again.
Frowning, Fran handed him a scrawled note.
‘Roz Bloom,’ she said. ‘Can you phone her back? She said it’s urgent.’
‘It’s always urgent with Roz,’ sighed Nick as he passed through baggage
retrieval, waving away thick smoke from a revolving stream of charred
luggage, before heading into departures. As a waiting crowd of
photographers and news journalists flashed their cameras at him, vying for
attention in the hope of an interview scoop with Stalkford’s ‘Miracle
Survivor’, Nick scanned the concourse in vain for Julia, then moved into
the drinks lounge.
He ordered his usual complimentary whisky from Phyllis, the barmaid,
whom Nick was considering dating after Julia and Fran, then crossed over
to an empty phone booth and dialled Roz’s number.
‘Well?’ he asked, as his former editor picked up the phone.
‘I heard about the accident,’ Roz said, stifling tears. ‘A big one, they said
. . .’
‘Yeah, devastating,’ Nick replied. ‘But I’m okay, thank God. Stop
crying.’
‘But Nick,’ Roz whispered, swallowing tears. ‘What about the others?’
‘What others?’
‘The dead and dying, Nick.’
‘The dead, Roz. The rest have stopped breathing. I’m sole survivor,
remember?’
‘But there are so many now, Nick. If you actually count up all the various
crash casualties . . .’
‘Which I won’t . . .’
‘There are over three thousand now, Nick. Three thousand lost souls.
And you seem utterly unconcerned about a single one of them.’
‘Correct.’
 ‘To you, these endless, devastating air disasters are simply routine
flights.’
Nick sighed, hardly believing that he was needing to go through all this
again. ‘Like I’ve told you numerous times, Roz, I’m the victim here. I’m the
one dealing with the persistent, day-to-day trauma of it all. I’m the one
emerging from each crash as sole survivor, with all the psychological
disorientation and confusion that entails. Not only that, but I’m also having
to handle these emerging psychokinetic powers of mine, namely an
unnerving psychic awareness of future events and, as of last night, a creepy
egg-boiling ability. All that lot have to do is die.’
He realised he was speaking too loudly. People were turning in their seats
to watch. There he is, Nick imagined them thinking. Captain Steen. The air
disaster guy. That Sky-Jonah who sees the future.
Well, they’re wrong, Nick thought angrily, downing his whisky in one.
Not least because ‘Jonah’ is a phrase referring to an unlucky seaman, not an
airman, even if they’ve added ‘Sky’ at the front in an attempt to legitimise
their mistake. The twats. He dashed his tumbler to the floor, which failed to
smash as he’d intended, being a plastic one. He turned his face from the
other patrons, embarrassed, wishing bitterly that he’d been able to predict
that eventuality. Damn it, why was Roz always on his back about these
bloody air disasters?
‘You’re knowingly flying innocents to their doom, Nick,’ Roz snapped
suddenly in his ear. ‘Night after night. Doesn’t your conscience even care
about that?’
‘Whether it cares or not, Roz, there’s a good reason I’m flying these lost
souls into an early grave. I’m developing my psychic abilities. Which are
improving with each fresh disaster. At some point, they’ll have developed
sufficiently for me to be able to destroy, once and for all, these escaping
horrors of my mind. I’m actually saving the world here, Roz. Not just a few
thousand tightwads on some doomed weekend budget flight from Ibiza.
Sure, it’s sad; I get that. But these are pawns in a cosmic game. A cosmic
game that has to be played for the sake of Mankind. I’m almost there, Roz.
I can feel it. I may not be able to bend a spoon with my mind just yet, but I
can certainly dull the shine on a brass ornament following eight weeks of
concentrated staring. One day very soon, I’ll become so powerful that I’ll
be able to single-handedly defeat all those horrors that my mind has
inadvertently unleashed upon unsuspecting humanity.’
 ‘And what new psychokinetic ability have you developed tonight, Nick?’
asked Roz, her voice calmer now. ‘How close are you getting?’
Nick thought for a moment. ‘I’m not quite sure, Roz. Now that you
mention it, as yet I can’t detect any notable change in my telekinetic powers
since tonight’s disaster. But I’m sure it will manifest itself sooner or later.’
He looked down at his watch. He was late for Julia. Correction: Julia was
early for him.
‘Gotta go,’ he said.
‘Wait, Nick. There’s one more thing. You remember that other book you
wrote?’
‘I wrote lots of books, Roz.’
‘That other aviation-based sole survivor-themed horror series . . .’
Nick screwed his eyes shut, trying to recall the book in question.
‘Deathflap,’ Roz said, jogging his memory.
Nick winced inwardly. Hell, he’d forgotten all about Deathflap.
‘What about Deathflap?’
‘And the sequels, Nick,’ Roz added. ‘Don’t forget the sequels. Deathflap
2: Return of the Deathflap. Deathflap 3: The Flappening. Deathflap 4 . . .’
‘Cut to the chase, Roz,’ Nick said. After all, the series had gone all the
way up to Deathflap 85, aka Flapocalypse IV (Deathflap vs Squawker).
‘Well, in case you need reminding, Nick, the Deathflap series also
featured the sole survivor of a plane crash. Only that character, Steve
Tracker, wasn’t haunted by portentums, Nick. He was haunted by Death
itself.’
Nick shuddered, suddenly remembering. There was a reason he’d put
those books out of his mind. ‘Correction, Roz,’ he said, trying to keep calm.
‘Steve Tracker was haunted by Deathflap. Not Death.’
‘Well whatever the actual name, Nick, Deathflap was a terrifying
embodiment of the Grim Reaper in half-skeleton, half-pterodactyl form.
And if you remember, it pursued Steve Tracker because he’d eluded death.
Escaped it, crash after crash. But it came for him in the end, Nick, precisely
because Steve Tracker had spurned Death. Escaped, night after eerie night,
the deadly flapping of Deathflap’s bony, webbed-winged embrace.’
‘Deathflap’s wings are partly feathered, Roz.’
‘That series ended, Nick,’ said Roz, ignoring him, ‘because Clackett
issued you with an ultimatum. Either Deathflap finally catches up with
Steve Tracker in a concluding volume, or the series gets cancelled anyway.’
 Bloody Clackett, Nick moaned, inwardly. Perhaps he should invite his
former publishers on board his next flight. Then he sensed Roz was gearing
up for something more.
‘Come on then, Roz,’ said Nick. ‘Spit it out.’
‘Deathflap is abroad, Nick.’
‘Where? Mogadishu? The Canary Islands?’
‘Abroad in the supernatural sense, Nick – i.e., around. Reports are
coming in of a leathery skull-like demon crossing international airspace,
Nick. Deathflap’s coming for you.’
Dammit, that’s all he needed. Another sole-survivor aviation-based
horror novel of his invading the current living embodiment of a sole-
survivor aviation-based horror of his.
‘Sure, Roz,’ said Nick, putting it out of his mind. Hell, he had enough
horrors to contend with on a daily basis, didn’t he? One more couldn’t hurt.
‘I’ll keep an eye out.’
‘Make sure you do, Nick. Because at some point soon, Deathflap itself is
going to catch up with you. Sole survivor or no sole survivor.’
‘Well, he can flap off as far as I’m concerned!’ Nick barked, then hung
up.
Ignoring the stares from surrounding drinkers, he grabbed his flight case
and marched back out into departures. Julia was there at last, standing
where he’d told her to meet him, directly outside the gents’ loos.
‘You’re early,’ he said, coldly.
‘I’m sorry, Nick,’ Julia replied, puckering her lips. He attempted a heavy
pet, but was immediately rebuffed.
‘I thought we’d try the duty-free perfume aisle tonight.’
‘Sure,’ Nick said, wearily. Evidently his nightly brushes with death were
starting to pale with her. ‘Or we could just go back to mine?’
‘Not tonight, Nick. I’m shopping,’ said Julia, already racing off towards
the glow of lights gleaming from a distant perfume counter.
He paused, considering calling a taxi for one, and then saw two men in
suits holding up a piece of cardboard with his name on it.
‘Captain Steen?’ said the taller of the two.
‘Yes?’
‘We’re here to take you to the awards ceremony.’
‘Awards ceremony?’ replied Nick, confused. ‘What awards ceremony?’
 ‘Why, to honour your extensive achievement in best-selling horror
fiction. You did receive our invitation?’
‘No,’ said Nick, confused. He couldn’t remember receiving anything.
Though he’d hardly been home between flights, he reflected. He had asked
Julia to sort through his mail and do all the cooking and cleaning while he
was away. No doubt she’d tossed out the invitation, along with all those
gone-off cartons of salad he refused to touch.
He examined the two men, closely. The youngest was tall, blond-haired
and of slim build. He wore a pair of mirrored shades. The man beside him
holding up the piece of card was older and heavier than his companion. This
guy was balding slightly; a pair of long, greying sideburns drawing his hair
downward, away from what looked like an old medical scar stretching
halfway across his forehead. The man’s hands sported a pair of black
leather driving gloves that grasped the length of card tightly, crushing each
side. Both men wore sharp-looking suits; the younger’s a tailored dark navy
affair, his companion’s a grey, functional off-the-peg.
Maybe these guys were on the level. One thing was certain. Neither of
them were part skeleton, part pterodactyl. And what harm could an award
do him, anyway? Having instigated a devastating supernatural catastrophe
directly threatening the entire future of the human race, Nick’s profile could
do with a bit of positive publicity.
‘Why not?’ said Nick. ‘Let’s go.’
The older man took Nick’s flight case from him and ushered him outside.
Out by the taxi rank, the man’s blond-haired companion pointed towards
their waiting car, which displayed a prominent logo down one side.
‘Nulltec,’ Nick read. Nulltec . . . Nick knew that name. But before he
could remember where from exactly, he was struck by the vision.
 CHAPTER TWO
‘Nulltec’

The earth passing below Nick was smooth yet sallow, like festering crème
fraîche. Its vast surface appeared to dip at either side of the distant horizon,
like the sloping curvature of some colossal ball of brie. As Nick descended
further towards this pasty plane, he perceived that he was gliding over the
surface of some dying planet. Swathes of stunted vegetation materialised as
he descended towards its surface, exposing stubs of withered flora and
fauna sprouting weakly under the tepid rays of an ailing alien sun.
Or were those follicles?
As Nick flew on, it seemed to him, in his dreamlike state, that he was
once more piloting another doomed plane, yet one whose wings, according
to his pilot’s readout, were now part-organic and webbed, if not leathered,
in form. As the unknown air-vessel transporting him continued onward
towards the distant horizon, beyond which lay an infinity of black, starless
sky, Nick began to entertain the unnerving notion that he was passing over
something far more dreadful than a mere dying planet. For as Nick’s speed
began to increase, his eyes gradually perceived the contours of a giant
mauve lake staining the planet’s surface. A lake that looked very much to
Nick like a colossal liver spot. His mind froze in a sudden paroxysm of
crippling cosmic horror as he realised that he was in fact traversing – at
insane speed – the ageing, balding pate of a gargantuan human head.
His own.
Nick screamed himself awake. As both eyes snapped open, he saw that
he was in the back seat of a moving vehicle, with the notable lack of
streetlights outside his passenger window suggesting they’d long since left
the outskirts of the city airport.
The two men in suits sat up front.
‘Where are we?’ asked Nick, unable to remember getting inside the car.
 ‘On our way,’ said the older man, who was driving. Nick caught his eye
in the rear-view mirror, staring back at him. Watching.
‘On our way where?’
‘To the award ceremony,’ said the younger man, in the passenger seat.
‘You’ve won the Nullman Prize, remember?’
‘The Nullman Prize?’ Nick repeated, trying his best to recall the award. It
was useless. Nick had only ever won prizes with demonic entities in the
title. Yet he knew that name from somewhere . . .
‘The award recognises your stunning achievements in the art of literary
incarnation,’ the blond man continued. ‘Bringing fictional reality to life. It’s
an award invented solely for you.’
‘Perhaps I invented it?’ quipped Nick.
Neither man laughed.
‘We don’t joke about Dr Nullman,’ the blond man said.
Nullman? Nick’s mind started racing. He knew that name, too. But from
where?
‘If I’m to receive an award,’ he said, testing the water, ‘then surely I
ought to be provided with some complimentary refreshments?’
‘Naturally,’ said the younger man, turning almost immediately to offer
Nick a mini bottle of Scotch from the passenger seat compartment. Nick
took the drink, glancing at the rear-view mirror again as he did so. The
driver was still staring at him, and Nick had the uncanny feeling that the
man hadn’t looked at the road ahead at any point during the last three
minutes.
Still suffering a headache from his terrifying portentum, Nick downed the
Scotch in one.
‘The Nullman Prize is much coveted, Mr Steen. An award for supreme
achievement in literary fiction. It represents formal acknowledgement of
your vast accomplishments in the field of creative world-building.’
‘Literal world-building, in my case,’ quipped Nick again, smiling dryly
at his own pithy wit.
Again, neither man laughed.
‘About time,’ said Nick, taking another Scotch from the younger man’s
hand as the driver continued to watch Nick’s movements via the rear-view
mirror. ‘A toast then, gentlemen,’ said Nick. ‘To myself, and the so-called
literati, who’ve been erroneously dissing my oeuvre for the past twenty
years.’
 Nick downed this second Scotch, hoping he was fooling them. Maybe it
was the rush of booze, or those two eyes piercing him from the mirrored
glass in front, but something didn’t add up. Why, when the entire world was
threatened by Nick’s escaping imagination, would a literary elite wish to
honour him for unleashing this horde of fictional demons? Something stank,
Nick figured.
Unexpectedly, the vehicle lurched sharply to the left, swerving over the
road as a rush of headlights swooped past them on the other side.
‘Apologies,’ said the driver, righting the vehicle while keeping his eyes
trained continually on Nick.
At this rate, they’d all be dead in five minutes.
‘Who’s Nullman?’ Nick asked, still wracking his brains for an answer.
‘Barbara Nullman,’ said the younger man, reaching into the passenger
compartment for a third mini bottle of Scotch. He turned around and handed
it to Nick. ‘Doctor Barbara Nullman.’
Dammit, Nick knew that name. But from where?
He downed his third drink, trying in vain to remember. As he did so, the
car left the road, turning left down a muddy lane leading towards a vast
spread of approaching forest.
‘Where’s this awards ceremony being held?’ asked Nick, confused by the
looming greenery. ‘It had better not be a writers’ retreat.’
Nick hated writers’ retreats. He’d only ever attended one, and had been
thrown out within the first hour for ridiculing everyone else’s fledgling
efforts. While perceived wisdom regarded writers’ retreats as a place to
share one’s work-in-progress and receive constructive criticism from fellow
scribes, Nick took the opposite view. ‘Criticism’ and ‘constructive’ were
mutually exclusive words. For Nick, a writers’ retreat meant precisely that.
An opportunity to ensure competing writers ran as far from his explosive
wrath as possible, thereby easing his own pathway to success.
‘Rest assured it’s no writer’s retreat,’ said the blond man. ‘For one thing,
the place we’re heading towards has excellent conference parking.’
Wait a moment, thought Nick, his mind racing again. That phrase . . .
Excellent conference parking. He’d heard it before, hadn’t he? Yes, it was a
slogan, dammit. A slogan on some brochure he’d once read . . . Then,
finally, he remembered.
The sign. The sign on the side of the car. Nick hadn’t clocked it at the
time as his mind had been immediately besieged by that terrifying
premonition of male baldness, but now he recalled the company’s logo.
Nulltec . . .
He peered through the windscreen at the road ahead. Against the distant
tree-line, Nick saw a grim, grey building looming into view.
Nulltec . . .
A place hardly anyone in Stalkford knew about. A stark, concrete
building situated somewhere off the D60 on the border of Chokewood
Forest, housed in a fenced-off stretch of open ground formerly owned by
the defence department of Stalkford City Council.
Nulltec . . .
The word itself gave Nick the creeps. For this was a place Nick knew
only too well, having unearthed rumours about it during an intense hour’s
worth of research for his mutated virus novel The Milky Strain. It was a
high-tech medical research facility specialising in unconventional scientific
experiments. Hardly the kind of venue for a supposed literary event . . .
‘Quit shitting me,’ said Nick. ‘You people aren’t awarding me a prize at
all, are you?’
The driver’s eyes finally turned from the rear-view mirror, shifting
towards the road ahead for the first time, and the fast-approaching concrete
building.
‘Hey, I’m talking to you, buddy,’ spat Nick gruffly, even though he
wasn’t the guy’s buddy at all. Not remotely his buddy.
As the car drew up alongside Nulltec, Nick leaned forward in his seat, his
eyes drawn to the place he’d read so little about during that brief, crucial
trip to Stalkford Library.
The large central building was of late sixties construction, rectangular in
shape yet corporate in feel, formed on each side from steel girders and
smooth concrete, which daylight would have revealed was dyed a light
shade of beige. The main premises was formed of three floors – Nick
counted – and the facility’s main entrance doors were shielded under a wide
protruding porch, which gave it the feel of a modern hospital building. Yet
the architectural finish was sleeker than that, Nick felt. Polished, almost, as
if a great deal of cash had been thrown at the place in recent years. A range
of ancillary buildings adjoined its central structure, and there were indeed,
Nick noted now, some excellent conference parking facilities.
But at this late hour, the building looked empty. Visible through the glass
door panelling, Nick made out an unmanned welcome desk with an empty
chair lit by the dim light of a dormant computer screen. The bulk of the
lobby’s interior was suffused with an electrical pink glow radiating from the
row of tall sodium lamps erected outside.
As the car ascended a paved ramp leading up to the main drop-off point,
Nick clocked the building’s signpost:

Nulltec – Your Tomorrow is Our Today.

Chief Evolver: Dr Barbara Nullman

A long list of letters followed this name, eventually taking up three

additional signposts.
Of course, Nick suddenly recalled . . . Nullman. Dr Barbara Nullman.
Nick knew who she was, alright.
That damned cow . . .
‘Okay, boys,’ he said, necking the last of his complimentary Scotch.
‘You’ve had your fun. Now what say you swing us right back round to the
airport again? Because I’m not going anywhere near the vicinity of that
woman.’
Then the tranquillisers they’d been feeding him finally kicked in.

The gag in his mouth muffled Nick’s screams as a long row of harsh strip
lights passed vertically overhead. Both arms and legs were bound to a
gurney and he was being wheeled at immense speed down a long, white,
clinical-looking corridor. Nick tried to angle his head sideways, so that he
could see who precisely was wheeling him, but his gaze remained fixed on
the ceiling above. Evidently his neck had been restrained, Nick concluded,
or else he’d been drugged with some form of highly illegal muscle-relaxant
serum.FN8
A deep judder shot through Nick’s spine as the metal gurney slammed
into a set of swing doors, barging them open. As they swung to behind him,
Nick felt himself being transported onward, down another featureless
corridor of endless white wall panelling.
He continued to scream through his gagged mouth, though no one heeded
his cries, and wondered exactly how the hell he’d got here. One moment
he’d been swallowing that third helping of Scotch and telling those two
planks in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t about to engage in another bout
of turgid philosophical debate with a former Nobel Prize winner, and then . .
. nothing. Nick had simply blacked out, then woken here, strapped to a
medical gurney, with hands and legs bound on each side.
Fighting off panic, Nick attempted to apply logic to his predicament.
Though he bore all the apparent trappings of some ailing hospital patient or
gibbering asylum nutcase, Nick knew he was sound in both body and mind.
That presumably meant he was not technically a patient here, but a prisoner
instead. A hostage. A captive. A detainee.
An incarcerat.FN9
But where exactly was he imprisoned? Who was imprisoning him? And
why?
On reflection, Nick figured he knew the answers to two of these
questions already. The first being Nulltec, presumably, and the second, as
head of the aforementioned Nulltec, that damned sanctimonious cow Dr
Barbara Nullman. Meaning Nick really only needed to ask himself that final
question. Why?FN10
He attempted in vain to shake his head. He didn’t yet have the answer to
that particular question. But as the gurney crashed through another set of
double doors into a corridor slightly darker in colour than the previous one
(yet still essentially white, if more of an off-white), Nick suspected he was
about to find out.
He couldn’t be certain due to his restricted view, but Nick suddenly
sensed a glow of electrical pink light coming from what he thought were
banks of monitors set into one of the adjacent walls.
As he was pushed through another set of double doors, still screaming
and continuing to scream through his gag as the gurney turned harshly to
the right and crashed through yet another set of double doors,FN11 Nick
sensed the pink glow intensifying, until finally he suspected that these
endless, featureless corridors he was travelling down were no longer
entirely featureless, and in fact bore certain features.
Drawing much-needed breath through both nostrils, Nick screwed his
eyes shut against the searing glare of a powerful overhead light snapping on
above him. As a loud, metallic grinding numbed his ears, Nick felt his body
being tipped suddenly forward into a sitting position. Then someone placed
his own spectacles back on his head.
 He blinked both eyes forcefully, attempting to rid both retinas of the
harsh afterglow caused by two giant overhead surgical lamps, then slowly
lifted his neck.
A bandaged face, allowing only a glimpse of two eyes and a human nose,
confronted him. As Nick flinched in fright, the figure flinched in fright with
him.
He was staring at his own reflection, he realised. Nick’s entire body was
bound in bandages from head to toe, with metal clamps securing him stiffly
to the trolley. As he watched, various pairs of hands reached in from either
side of his body to unwind, roughly and without any hint of surgical grace,
the soiled and bloody medical dressings surrounding his aching cranium.
Feeling a layer of gauze being yanked free from his mouth area, Nick
attempted to speak, but was immediately silenced by a violent slap from
one of the nearby hands. He could do little then but watch his own
reflection as the assembled mitts continued to unwind the bandage from
around his head, strip by strip, until at long last the final dressing was
removed to reveal, beneath . . .
He closed both eyes, unable to take in the monstrous sight confronting
him.
For Nick Steen was no longer Nick Steen.
Nick Steen, he realised, using the third person to disassociate himself
entirely from current proceedings, was bald.
Totally, utterly bald.
 CHAPTER THREE
‘Incarcerat’

Bald.
Then the terrifying vision had indeed come to pass.
Bald.
Nick felt the anger rising up within him.
They’d shaved him, the bastards. Shorn him of his beloved locks. So roughly too, he
noted, once he’d mustered sufficient courage to re-open both eyes and confront the horror
head-on, that grazed patches of torn skin now peppered his head like sliced salami
scatterings.
Baldery.
‘Free his neck,’ said a female voice, harsh and business-like in timbre. A
no-nonsense voice. The voice of a ball-busting female who gets things
done. A voice that stamped hard when necessary; harder when unnecessary.
A voice that Nick guessed might howl and snarl like a raging tigress atop
the quivering body of some floored and subservient lover. The voice of one
tough-talking, sultry-walking, chiselled-diamond female canine.FN12
A fresh set of hands appeared at Nick’s side and deftly removed his neck
restraint.
He could see her in the mirror now, a knot of golden hair bunched neatly
behind a bold and prominent forehead. Two amber eyes pierced Nick’s own
with a stern yet inquisitive intensity. A smear of functional lipstick coloured
a deceptively plain-looking face, which Nick suspected rarely smiled. She
was around forty, he guessed, wearing large glasses in golden frames
matching Nick’s in both size and severity. A pair of gold hoop earrings
completed the portrait of stern, no-nonsense professionalism, yet Nick
sensed a spark of passion buried under the austere countenance. A stale yet
not displeasingly smoky scent wafted upward from the yellowing sleeves of
her lab coat as she smoothed Nick’s bruised shoulders, mixed with an
aroma of hastily chewed cherry breath mints. The firm lines on either side
of her mouth confirmed it. The woman was a serious smoker.
As she stood back from him for a moment, Nick couldn’t help but clock
the cold yet commanding formality of the woman’s caramel plaid skirt, that
ended, nevertheless, some way above her knees, exposing, beneath, the
coppery shimmer of her smooth, unladdered work stockings. As the woman
leaned over him again to rub a cold cotton pad across his cheeks, Nick
noted, the advanced length of her fingernails. Hardly a practical choice for
the hard-working medical professional, he figured. And there were small
areas, too, that had evidently escaped the woman’s regular polish-removal
regime. These tiny flecks betrayed her tint of choice – a deep, burgundy red.
Nick wondered if she ever wore lipstick that colour.
‘I apologise for the current state of attire,’ she said, smoothing the
compress over his brow.
‘Don’t,’ said Nick, thankful for the pad’s cooling touch. ‘It’s maybe
better you dress down.’
‘I meant you,’ the woman said, matter-of-factly. ‘Nulltec requires all
patients to be stripped, searched, probed, hosed, shaved, probed again
intimately, photographed post-probe, fiddled with, then probed again before
a full but not necessarily final probing.’
Ahh, thought Nick, tentatively flexing his buttock cheeks. So that is
what’s happened.
‘I’m Barbara Nullman,’ she said.
‘I know,’ Nick replied, not quite able to believe he was facing the Nobel
Prize winner in the flesh. So this was to do with revenge, then. ‘Is this about
my book, The Hissing Link?’ he asked.
‘Not at all,’ replied Nullman. ‘Even if it was a fairly obvious and
damning caricature.’
She was right on that score, Nick had to admit. Though he’d fallen shy of
naming Nullman outright on the advice of Clackett’s lawyers, the story of
Dr Barbara McNullman in Nick’s dystopian ‘mutant gene’ novel had indeed
been an intentional critique of Nullman’s most famous medical discovery.
Hell, Nick had been sore, that was all. And why the hell not? For in one
single night, Nullman had discovered how to extract the R-ComplexFN13
from the brains of human beings, and by so doing, had developed a
scientific method of evolving Mankind that effectively kicked Nick’s
lifelong mission to do the same via horror fiction into the proverbial dust.
 Nullman had won a Nobel Prize that year. Nick had won Best Tentacle
Death in the Nautical category of Port Talbot’s rescheduled ShockerCon for
his killer coral novel, The Coral What Killed.
Not that he wasn’t proud of the award, but a Nobel Prize could well have
nudged his novel sales into double figures. Since then, he’d done his best to
forget the entire thing. And had largely succeeded.
Until tonight.
‘We’ve been studying you for some time, Mr Steen.’
‘It’s Captain Steen.’
She smiled at him, briefly. Then stopped. ‘I think we can dispense with
the whole “Captain” nonsense.’
‘My name is Captain Nicholas Steen,’ Nick repeated, stiffly. ‘Serial
Number 13666. That’s all the information you’ll get out of me.’
‘Mr Steen, giving your fictional pilot persona a flight identity number
consisting of the “unluckiest” numeral along with another signifying the
supposed “Number of the Beast” is clichéd and entirely implausible.
Genuine pilots use call signs, not numbers. Neither do professional airline
companies employ those same numerals for any routine flight numbers, in
order to avoid outbreaks of superstitious panic and inevitable ridicule.’
She snapped her fingers. Immediately, the three lab assistants who’d
wheeled Nick in swung his gurney round 180 degrees.
He now found himself facing a wide bank of visual monitors hitherto
masked from view. On each screen played raw, unedited footage of air
accident recovery scenes; a vast pool of graphic newsreel depicting the grim
aftermath of numerous plane disasters. Nick observed shots of wreckage
being sifted through, smoking corpses being doused with fire extinguishers,
then quietly looted by arriving emergency crews. He recognised the familiar
flight serial numbers on several pieces of strewn wreckage. He’d flown
every single one of those damned planes.
‘We’ve detected that you are currently inhabiting the plot of your 1999
novel The Portentor,’ said Nullman. ‘Tell me, have you been experiencing
any of these so-called “portentums”? Any ominous prefigurations or
psychic premonitions as a result of these recurring crashes?’
Nick suddenly caught sight of himself on the various monitor
screens, emerging, sole survivor, from every stricken plane.
Bathed in flame, yet somehow completely uninjured. And inside
his brain, with every crash, the awakening of some latent psychic
ability. Powers, Nick now sensed, as Nullman ran her long nails
and hands over his shoulders, that he ought to keep secret from
Nulltec.
‘I can boil an egg with my mind,’ said Nick. ‘But that’s about it.’
‘You’re lying, Mr Steen.’ Nullman pointed at the numerous dials and
data-measuring devices spaced between each monitor. ‘Our scanners can
pick up all thoughts and visions you experience, either conscious or
unconscious.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Officially, here at Nulltec we explore the furthest reaches of human
consciousness, Mr Steen. We specialise in extrasensory powers, telepathic
communication . . . psychokinetic abilities . . .’
‘And unofficially?’
‘That’s classified,’ Nullman replied, casually wafting away a cloud of
smoke from her latest cigarette. ‘You are a very special subject, Mr Steen.
Somewhere, deep in your cerebral hemispheres, housed in an undefined
area between your frontal, temporal and parietal lobes, there lies a bridge. A
bridge between your three warring consciousnesses: sub-, un- and waking.
A bridge between this world, and some unknown parallel dimension. A
bridge, I must tell you now, that we at Nulltec intend to blow.’
Nick swallowed hard. ‘Keep talking,’ he said, trying to sound tough,
despite being bald.
‘Whatever the innate “quality” of your fiction, Mr Steen – and we at
Nulltec deem it particularly lowbrow – the supernatural denizens of your
imagination nevertheless now exist for real. They are alive and breathing,
defying all laws of rationality and logic. Crude works of visceral, paperback
horror grown suddenly incarnate. As such, Nulltec must treat these literary
creations seriously, even if no one else does.’
Right, thought Nick, shaking his head. Like you understand visionary
horror.
‘The truth is, your escaping imagination is poised to destroy humanity.
Our entire existence here in Stalkford, and beyond, is threatened not just by
the terrifying horrors you have unleashed, but also by those burgeoning
psychic powers latent within you. If we were to let you continue on your
current path, Mr Steen, those powers you are steadily gaining from each air
accident would themselves become an agent of destruction. A horrifying
evil unleashed upon this world. Without you realising it, your supposed
noble intention of saving Mankind from supernatural ruin would instead
have the opposite effect. Those unchecked psychic powers slowly
manifesting themselves in your mind would soon rain down destruction
upon the world as the colossal ego within your head swelled, ultimately
turning on all who dare challenge it. Your hideous portentum of earthly
destruction is essentially one of self-destruction.’
What the hell was she banging on about? wondered Nick. Exactly what
hideous portentum of earthly destruction? Did she mean Nick’s unholy
vision of male-pattern baldness? Surely that particular horror had already
come to pass? Maybe Nullman was making this whole thing up to justify
balding him with impunity and keeping him here against his will for slating
her in print.
And yet, Nick thought, breaking off his own train of thought. There was
much in the vision that had yet to be explained, wasn’t there? Those
leathery, skin-covered aeroplane wings, for one thing. And something else,
Nick recalled, suddenly seeing the image clearly in his mind’s eye again.
That vast bald headscape below him; that barren, dying plain he’d been
flying over. Maybe it wasn’t just a vast floating human head, after all.
Maybe it was precisely what he’d thought it was when he’d first glimpsed it
from above.
A planet . . .
Earth, maybe – now a barren, empty, devastated world. Entirely
destroyed, or so it had seemed to Nick. But by what? Did an answer to the
riddle lie in the appalling symbolism of Nick’s vision? A symbolism he’d so
far failed to notice? For if that dead planet – if a dead planet was indeed
what it was – resembled Nick’s own head, swollen monstrously to a vast,
cosmic size, then did that mean that he, in fact, was the symbolic cause of
the planet’s ultimate ruin? Was he, Nick Steen, a Destroyer of Worlds? Was
Nick’s vast, swollen head, enraged by its sudden lack of hair, the first step
in Earth’s forthcoming Apocalypse?
‘Why don’t you leave this whole thing to me?’ said Nick. ‘After another
hundred or so crashes, I’ll easily have enough latent psychic powers to do
battle with my own fictional outpourings. That way, no one else gets hurt –
apart from more passengers – and I get a Nobel Prize, too.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Nullman, as her lab assistants turned Nick’s gurney
round to face her again. She was back over by the mirror now, leaning up
against it nonchalantly, one arm held casually over her chest, while the
other held aloft a freshly lit cigarette.
‘Your synapses have been wired in to our central computer,’ she said,
tapping ash into a nearby Petri dish. ‘Somewhere in the region of one
hundred million nerve-cell fibres inside your brain are now connected
directly to our main scanning sensors in Central Probe.’
‘What’s Central Probe?’ asked Nick.
‘It’s where we keep our main scanning sensors.’
One of the assistants held up a small mirror behind Nick’s neck so that he
could see, for the first time since he’d been shaved, the back of his own
head. He shuddered, almost gagging at the sight confronting him. Of
course! How else could they have seen into his mind? To Nick’s horror, a
tangled cluster of wires and tubes had been fed into the back of his skull via
precision-drilled holes, right through to his cerebellum and occipital lobes.
He was a freak.
Nullman lit a fresh cigarette, inhaling deeply, then leaned down and
exhaled the smoke out of her own mouth, directly into Nick’s.
He coughed, feeling the vaguest of twitchings in his dormant manhood.
Christ alive, he thought. This cow’s turning me on.
‘I’m going to seal up that hole in your head,’ she said, smiling at him
almost playfully. ‘I’m sure you’ll let me do something like that to you . . .’
She extended her longest, burgundiest nail outward and stroked it upward
under Nick’s chin, teasingly. ‘. . . Won’t you?’
Nick swallowed hard.
And nodded.
 CHAPTER FOUR
‘Phase I’

‘Let’s meet Dr Valesco,’ said Nullman. Immediately, the two orderlies

wheeled Nick over to a door in the far wall. At the push of a button, the
panel slid aside to reveal a thin, declining ramp leading downward into a
darkened room below. With a sudden jolt, Nick felt himself dip forward as
he slid slowly into the shadows.
The room he entered was large and lit only by an eerie pinkish glow
coming from a single monitor. The remainder of the area was steeped in a
murky, impenetrable gloom.
Nick looked around, seeing nothing, then heard the flick of a cigarette
lighter somewhere ahead. A spark of light flared on the far side of the room,
illuminating a slight, lab-coated figure standing silently in the shadows.
‘Dr Valesco is Assistant Chief Head of the Nulltec Corporation,’ said
Nullman from behind.
Valesco was short but thin, his expression seemingly forever held in a
permanent, knowing half-smile. If Nullman hadn’t pointed him out, Nick
might never have known the guy had been standing there in the shadows.
Beneath his neatly starched lab coat, Valesco was wearing a formal slate-
grey suit. His sleekly silvered hair was thick, neat and lustrous on top. His
ice-blue eyes glared coldly at Nick. Then his gaze flicked right, like a
reptile’s, at one of the orderlies, who immediately flipped a switch,
snapping on a row of overhead strip lights.
‘Dr Valesco has been working on our prototype,’ said Nullman.
Unsure what she was referring to, Nick scrutinised the interior of the
room in greater detail. He could see now that the place was a testing
laboratory of some kind, each white-panelled wall supporting a now
customary bank of computer monitors and research desks. Then Nick
caught sight of it, standing in the very centre of the room.
A device.
 The thing appeared to consist of two units, the larger of the pair
resembling a large metallic chair, which Nick felt was in sore need of a
cushion. From its rear, a mesh of protruding wires connected this
rudimentary seat to a row of electric panelling on one of the larger computer
consoles behind. A form of head restraint constructed in the shape of a half-
oval, like a sliced egg, hung suspended above it.
Beside the chair, meanwhile, stood a box.
For some reason, this second object unnerved Nick more than anything
else he’d experienced so far. It was small, metallic and rectangular in shape,
suspended at chest height by four long, thin-wheeled struts. Two handles
were attached to the rear side of the crate itself, and spaced evenly along
one side were three large push buttons, labelled ‘Powerful’, ‘More
Powerful’ and ‘Even More Powerful’. On the top of the box was a red
beacon that, when operated, Nick guessed, would revolve and flash like an
emergency vehicle’s siren. In front of this was a large riveted circular plate
from which protruded a lengthy section of cable. This mass of pipework,
ten inches in diameter and resembling an air-conditioner’s ducting hose, lay
coiled like a large anaconda beside the box itself, culminating in what
looked to Nick like an elaborately pinned plug outlet.
The whole thing resembled the abandoned blueprint for some primitive
supermarket trolley, one without space for one’s shopping, massive long
legs and a huge cable sticking out of its interior mechanism. But maybe
what frightened Nick most about the contraption – for Nick guessed it had
to be some sort of technical device – were three words inscribed upon its
front-facing metal plate:
THE GOD SOCKET

‘What in hell’s name is the God Socket?’ asked Nick.

‘An invention of mine,’ replied Nullman, coming round from Nick’s rear
to stand beside the silver-haired scientist. ‘Developed by Dr Valesco here,
and his team. One that will lead to far greater recognition for me than a
mere Nobel Prize.’
‘What, specifically, is the God Socket?’ asked Nick, realising he was
none the wiser despite Nullman’s answer, and hoping a degree of
qualification might help.
‘The God Socket is essentially a small nuclear reactor housed inside a
baking tin.’
 Nick nodded. At least he now had some idea of what the God Socket
was.
‘And what precisely does this “God Socket” do?’ he asked, seeking some
additional clarification, in addition to the previous additional clarification.
‘Quite simply, Mr Steen, it nullifies.’
‘Meaning?’ Nick asked, aware that saying, ‘What’s “nullifies”?’ would
sound inelegant.
‘We call the process nullification,’ continued Nullman. ‘The God Socket
“nullifies” certain synapses in the brain. In your case, it will neuter your
rampant imagination and, in layman’s parlance, “bung up” the mind-leak
you are currently suffering from. It’s essentially the hand of God. In a box.’
A sudden noise from the contraption drew Nick’s attention. The red
beacon on top lit up and began whirling in a circular motion in response to
what had sounded to Nick’s ears like the crack of a party popper somewhere
inside its internal mechanism. The crate itself was starting to judder too,
Nick noticed. With a second audible crack, a small cloud of smoke puffed
upward from the centre of the circular plate, which Nick now realised was
an opening of some kind. Then the box went still again.
‘I’m not going near that thing,’ declared Nick.
‘You don’t have to,’ said Nullman. ‘It will come to you.’
‘Beg your pardon?’
‘Put him in the chair.’
Valesco stepped forward, along with a row of hitherto unseen orderlies
who materialised suddenly from the surrounding shadows. Immediately,
Nick felt himself being hoisted from his gurney and carried by several
hands towards the strange-looking chair.
‘Stop this,’ said Nick uselessly, feeling the back of his head snag sharply
as the clutch of wires drilled into the back of his skull caught on numerous
hands. He winced as one of Valesco’s assistants tripped over the heavy
cabling still trailing behind Nick’s back from the room above. Then he felt
himself being twisted around, his head pushed roughly forward so that the
orderlies could unscramble the muddled wiring behind.
As the cabling gradually became freed, someone yanked Nick’s head
backward again. Before him stood Nullman, smiling as she dragged deeply
on a fresh cigarette.
To his horror, Nick realised he had a full stonk-on.
‘Now, you may feel a small prick,’ she said, smirking.
 ‘Very funny,’ Nick replied, trying to maintain a degree of dignity. What
the hell were they doing to him? Here he was, being man-handled by an ice
queen whom he ought to be resisting with every fibre of his being, and yet
he was somehow completely powerless, with the wrong part of his anatomy
instead rising to the occasion.
Perhaps his mind was flashing back to those former days he’d spent
servicing a dominant and sex-obsessed cursed typewriter, but the truth was,
Nullman had him by the proverbial googlies, and Nick, once again, was
powerless to intervene on his own behalf. He prayed to God he’d been
drugged with some sort of aphrodisiac serum,FN14 and wasn’t just somehow
perversely attracted to his female tormentor.
‘I guess removing the R-Complex from a human brain wasn’t enough for
you, eh Nullman?’ said Nick as Valesco and his team strapped his body
tightly to the chair. ‘I guess becoming famous the world over for
successfully removing the R-Complex, our deep-rooted reptilian instinct
also known as the basal ganglia or basal nuclei, containing the brain stem,
limbic region and the amygdala, from human brain tissue, and thereby fast-
tracking the next stage in Mankind’s evolution, didn’t quite scratch your
itch?’
Nullman smiled, exhaling more smoke in his direction.
‘Or maybe,’ continued Nick, coughing slightly, ‘what happened to that
poor chump you removed it from put the kibosh on the whole “evolution”
thing. Maybe that guy buying several gowns in differing shades of green
and retiring permanently to a yak-furred yurt somewhere in the middle of
Epping Forest wasn’t quite the titanic leap forward in human progress you’d
envisaged? Is that it, Nullman? Is your ultimately foolhardy decision to
remove the man’s R-Complex, his deep-rooted reptilian instinct also known
as the basal ganglia or basal nuclei, containing the brain stem, limbic region
and the amygdala, thereby turning him into a human aubergine, what this is
all really about?’
What was the point? No matter how much he might struggle with her,
Nick knew that she knew he was putty in her hands. Let’s face it, it was
hard to hide a boner when that boner was no longer hidden. Why not just
live with that?
And maybe Nullman was on the level, after all. Maybe he had nothing
whatsoever to worry about. And maybe, if Nulltec did block up that hole in
his mind, he could even ask Nullman out for dinner tonight? Maybe invite
himself back to her place to examine her Nobel? Maybe even polish it for a
brisk five minutes.
‘Pierce his pate,’ said Nullman.
Nick barely had time to take in those words when he felt several small
needles pressing uncomfortably downward against his hairless skull as the
oval-shaped head restraint above him plunged downward. He was receiving
some form of cranial injection, he realised, the head restraint piercing
Nick’s skull with what felt like a thousand miniature pins.
‘Relax, Mr Steen,’ said Valesco, plugging the pinned end of the cable,
which Nick presumed was the God Socket itself, into the top half of his
head restraint. He glanced left, and saw, with horror, that his brain was now
fully wired up to the adjacent box.
Nullman withdrew to the far side of the room, which Nick now realised
was divided from the central area by a glass partition. As several scientists
began inputting data into a range of consoles, Nullman held up a small
microphone to her mouth and spoke, her voice hitting Nick’s ears from a
pair of overhead speakers.
‘When Doctor Valesco presses the first button on the God Socket, I want
you to concentrate on imagining a nice sandy beach.’
Nick looked down in horror at the machine beside him. ‘You mean the
button marked “Powerful”?’ he said, starting to sweat.
‘The first button, yes,’ Nullman replied. ‘Not the second or third button.’
‘What happens if he does press the next button? The button marked
“More Powerful”?’
‘He will only press the button I tell him to press. Which will be the first
button, marked “Powerful”. Not that second button, which is marked “More
Powerful”.’
But what if Nullman told Valesco to press that second button on purpose,
Nick wondered? The button marked ‘More Powerful’? What then? Or what
about button three, for that matter? That third button marked ‘Even More
Powerful’?
‘What happens if he p-presses this third button?’ cried Nick, starting to
stammer.
‘Let’s not consider that possibility,’ said Nullman. ‘The God Socket is
only a prototype, you understand. No one is allowed to press button three,
the button marked “Even More Powerful”, without my say-so. And were
they to do so . . .’ She paused to light a fresh cigarette.
 ‘Yes?’ Nick yelled. ‘Were they to press button three, the one marked
“Even More Powerful”? What then?’
Nullman exhaled, smoke hitting the glass panel in front of her, briefly
obscuring her face.
‘I daren’t say what would happen then. If some fool were to foolishly
press button three, the button marked “Even More Powerful” . . .’
What the hell was this damned thing? Nick asked himself, panicking. He
tried to glance upward at the cranial restraint encasing him. Useless. The
wires protruding from his head, leading upward into the machine itself,
restricted all movement.
Valesco finished making some rudimentary adjustments to the machine
and manoeuvred himself round to the side of the God Socket, his finger
poised over button one.
‘Ready,’ he said.
‘Good,’ replied Nullman from behind the screen, her voice coming
through the loudspeaker above. ‘Very well, Doctor Valesco . . . You may
press button one.’
‘No,’ said Nick. ‘Please!’
Doctor Valesco pressed button one.
Smoke rose immediately from the box as its red beacon began to flash
and whirl. The rectangular object began to judder and bounce as a vague
grinding sound reverberated from somewhere within. Then the wheels on
which the contraption was standing began to slide across the floor,
triggering an automatic locking mechanism on each strut that instantly froze
each leg in place. But that only seemed to cause the machine itself more
aggravation, as another burst of smoke, thickly black this time, shot upward
from between the metal grooves of the riveted circular plate from which the
cabled socket extended.
Nick’s eyes caught sight of a pulsating movement surging through the
cable now, moving upward and over the intervening space, until finally it
disappeared into the cranial restraint above his own head.
Then Nick felt the walls of his brain blast inward. A million detonations
exploded deep inside his skull, as bolts of searing pain shot through his
internal synapses, triggering a flash of competing images inside his
frazzling mind.
At once he was a pilot again, flying over that vast bald pate on leathered
wings, yet falling now, crashing downward in a terrifying death spiral
towards the parched, hairless surface below, where, directly in the path of
his deathly descent, stood Roz, staring upward in awe and terror at the
approaching instrument of fiery, premature death. Then a cluster of other
images flashed past Nick’s vision as the pale, devastated ground below him
drew ever closer.
His family home, in ruins . . . A teetering tower block . . . then a host of
heavenly angels descending upon dumbstruck crowds gathered below . . . a
Gothic Mansion by the sea, aflame . . . a creepy doll . . . a cooked breakfast,
but that was because Nick hadn’t eaten since his in-flight meal . . . two
balls, evidently his own, given the botched tattoo on them that his wife had
subsequently refused to pay for . . . the same daubed conkers, now trapped
in the mangling platen of an ancient typewriter . . . Nick’s own wife and
daughter, far away, almost out of reach yet still flipping him the bird . . .
then Roz again, screaming and shrieking as Nick’s wing-borne engine of
destruction finally slammed into the ground.
As Nick’s mind impacted with it, the large pane of glass separating
Nullman and her team from the God Socket exploded into a billion shards.
The shock snapped Nick’s mind back into the present. He saw scientists
reeling sideways to avoid the bursting glass, rolling left and right, shielding
eyes and ears from the exploding fragments.
And Nullman, standing tall amid the chaos. Unmoved. Undamaged.
Unconcerned.
She dragged deeply on her cigarette, nodding to herself. And smiled.
‘I thought you were trying to weaken my powers!’ yelled Nick. ‘Not
strengthen them!’
‘Again,’ said Nullman.
‘No, dammit!’ cried Nick as Valesco raised his finger once again over
button one. ‘I said no!’
Valesco pressed down a second time.
At once, the pulsing surge shot from the box, faster this time, making its
way over to Nick’s head in only three or four seconds. Then another wave
of explosions detonated inside Nick’s skull.
Another portentum . . . Roz now a charred and blackened skeleton,
recognisable only by her impervious slingbacks . . . a world in ruin, baked
dry by the dying sun as men-beasts howled and gibbered and ate each other
in caravans . . . a vast stone edifice of Nick’s own face . . . a petrifying
shriek of primal despair, levelling buildings to dust, felling millions upon
millions in its path . . .
Then a terrifying flapping of wings, as the world went suddenly and
permanently dark . . .
Nick opened his eyes and saw Nullman’s technicians running for cover.
Running for their lives . . .
Jeez, Nick thought. I have the power. I have the power within me . . . The
power to destroy.
He looked over at Nullman, who stood still amid the maelstrom,
apparently unconcerned by Nick’s display of uncontrollable psychic
aggression.
‘You lied to me,’ Nick hissed, struggling with his bonds. He’d lost his
stonk-on completely now, and all he felt was rage. Sheer, blind, rage . . .
‘We have a slight problem,’ said Doctor Valesco, consulting a small
computer printout coming from one of the nearby monitors. ‘He’s now able
to channel those newly supercharged psychic powers directly.’
Nullman nodded. ‘Put him out,’ she said.
All at once, a group of security personnel in crash helmets, whom Nick
hadn’t previously noticed, leaped forward from a bench on the far side of
the room and grabbed at him. As their combined limbs struggled to force
Nick’s gaze away from Nullman’s, the author-cum-cursed-airline-pilot
fought savagely to escape the constraints of his chair, hoping to somehow
fry his aggressors.
Destroy them, said a strange voice deep inside Nick’s mind. Destroy them
all.
Then his mind went blank, his face growing suddenly calm as his own
eyes blazed with a hitherto unknown cosmic fury . . .
One of the guards screamed out suddenly, grabbing his helmet in both
hands as he collapsed to the floor, both eyes bubbling like hot mud. Then
another security guard did the same, reaching downward this time, to his
own groin, where two sharp patches of red had suddenly ruptured against
his nylon trouser front as both lower balls exploded.FN15
‘Terminate the experiment,’ said Doctor Valesco.
Calmly, coldly, Nullman continued to assess the ongoing situation.
‘Fine,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘Terminate Phase One.’
Valesco walked over to a small cabinet and drew out something from
within.
 But Nick wasn’t watching him. If it even was Nick anymore. For the
voice inside the author’s mind now sounded more like that of an
empowered deity. A powerful new psychic ability had been awoken by
Nick’s fusion with the God Socket, and Steen now possessed, he felt
perfectly sure, an ability to overcome and destroy all oppressors.
Wrenching himself free from the security guards, Nick stared directly
into Nullman’s eyes, focusing his newly awoken mental powers on her face
alone. He concentrated his mind, intent on bursting the Nobel-Prize-
winning brain situated in that lowly, backward skull into a million different
pieces.
Nullman lit yet another cigarette and blew several smoke rings at him
through a fresh-looking pair of luscious, burgundy lips.
She’s reapplied, a small part of Nick’s head thought, suddenly. That ice-
cold vixen has gone and reapplied . . .
‘Phase One complete,’ Nullman said, as Doctor Valesco injected his
syringe into Nick’s arse.
 CHAPTER FIVE
‘Scorcher and the Taffer’

Another portentum.
Nick watched the surface roll under him as he flew once more over the
vast cosmic scalp.
Blown by a powerful solar gale, Nick passed over what looked to him
like a pair of vast, oval lakes: immense cyan-blue ponds reflecting the starry
heavens, yet marked all over by an intricate network of crimson vegetation
shimmering below the surface. This blood-red mesh appeared to float
among the swirling torrents as Nick moved closer to the two lakes. Then he
suddenly rose at speed, as though propelled by some powerful gust of
energy from below. As Nick ascended above the two lakes, he gradually
discerned two gigantic swirling eddies at the heart of each pool. Vast,
spinning whirlpools of deepest, darkest black.
Eyes.
He was looking down at a pair of gigantic eyes.
His eyes.
Nick woke with a yell and found that, actually, the eyes weren’t his after
all, and instead belonged to the head of a large golden retriever staring
directly into his own. The dog’s muzzle was resting in a gap between Nick’s
feet, its jaws a mere yard from his vulnerable genitalia. Nick froze, keeping
perfectly still, aware now that he was in some form of waiting room,
spread-eagled on another gurney with multiple wires still plugged to his
head. These connected him, he saw as he risked a brief glimpse leftward, to
a portable power pack attached to a near-to-bursting catheter unit.
‘Easy, boy,’ he said, turning again to the dog.
The animal’s eyes were a different colour now, glowing a metallic pink.
As Nick watched, two iron clasps shot forth from the gurney’s handrails,
securing themselves around Nick’s wrists.
‘What the . . .?’
 As the dog’s eyes shone an even brighter pink, a larger clasp sprung from
the underside of the gurney and arced itself over Nick’s chest, encasing his
exposed midriff, trapping him against the trolley.
Dammit. This dog was psychic.
But I’m psychic too, thought Nick. Or at least, I was. Somehow, Nick
was no longer quite feeling the godlike rage within that he recalled having
been awakened by his encounter with the God Socket. Perhaps the effect
wore off once he’d been disconnected from the device. Concentrating his
mental energies, Nick tried to blow the dog’s innards inside out. He loved
animals, but golden retrievers were like wasps. Viciously aggressive,
dangerous, and borderline lethal when swarming. Mankind was better off
without them. He felt a familiar surge of psychic power welling up within
his brain. There was something left inside there, after all.
Yet no sooner had the hound’s bodily integrity begun reforming itself as
Nick focused his psychic stare on the beast’s rump, than the creature’s eyes
glowed pink again, more fiercely than before. Suddenly, two jets of pink
flame shot outward, towards Nick’s eyes, nullifying his own burst of
psychic mind-force midway, angling the trajectory downward, towards the
region of Nick’s exposed loins. As a white-hot burning sensation
commenced to singe his particulars, the former author-turned-doomed-
airline-pilot lost all control of his own concentrated burst of psychic energy,
relenting at last to the unabated discharge of canine brain-lasering from this
most psychic of mutts.
As the dog’s two streams of pinkened flame hovered mere millimetres
from the outer nestage of Nick’s scrotal sack, they suddenly ceased.
He’d been spared.
‘You crazy cur,’ gasped Nick, shaking his frazzled head in disbelief. ‘You
nearly fried my future progeny.’
Then Nick saw it. A glare in the retriever’s eyes. Almost a smile, he
sensed. And he knew then that the creature had been merely toying with
him. The dog had no intention of letting his balls go after all. As the
retriever’s eyes glowed pink again, Nick prepared himself for the worst.
Then a voice rattled loudly across the room in pidgin Welsh. ‘Look you!’
it rasped.
The dog bounded instantly from Nick’s imperilled groin, skittering itself
over the shiny waxed floor in pursuit of a sudden sprinkling of rolled
snacks.
 Nick looked up as a tall, heavyset figure struggled to enter the room via
the doorway opposite. The man was broad-shouldered and evidently blind,
his featureless eyes protruding from both sockets like two bulbous orbs of
blanched scallop. He was struggling to determine the position of the
doorframe, smacking a long, thick cane against both sides. Nick soon
realised this cane was in fact a giant leek, hardened into a solid club, its
surface lacquered with some form of ceramic glaze.
The man’s sorry excuse for a lab coat was formed from bright red flannel,
resembling a type of shawl or poncho. From it hung a collection of
rudimentary charms and what looked to Nick like small dream-catchers.
These dangled variously from the man’s pockets, shoulders and ears.
His baggy trousers, meanwhile, were coloured the pale green of a freshly
harvested broad bean. Both legs were tucked tightly into a pair of chestnut-
brown leather riding boots, dating, Nick hazard-guessed, from around the
early nineteenth century.
The man’s greying hair was long, thick and dusted with yellowing
nicotine. Matted tufts hung low on either side of his face, which itself bore a
tattooed image on one cheek of a monstrous leek next to a double-decker
bus, with the legend ‘Llangollen ’67’ emblazoned in red beneath.
Slanting inward atop the man’s head stood a traditional Welsh hat, tall
and speckled with dust. Nick could see why, as the man bashed it hard
against the top frame of the door as he staggered through, stooping clumsily
to gain full entrance. The long, polished leek in his right hand smacked to
and fro across the floor, upending ornaments and knocking items of
laboratory equipment to the ground.
‘Look you,’ the man bellowed again, smashing Nick’s IV pole sideways
with a large sweep of his leek.
‘No, look you,’ snapped Nick, as the large bag of bladder waste teetered
for a second on the precipice, then rocked back again into its former
standing position.
‘Don’t you worry ’bout that there bastard dog, boyo,’ said the man,
raising his leek suddenly upward above his head, before slamming it down
again across the gurney’s side rails, striking a hidden catch that instantly
freed Nick’s clasps. The man then flung an outstretched hand in the region
of Nick’s feet and waited for him to shake it.
‘Up here,’ said Nick.
 The man ducked instinctively at something in the air, then turned his
head and arm stiffly to the left.
‘Wrong end.’
The man turned again, rotating his body in the opposite direction, until at
long last his hand was pointing in the general area of Nick’s body.
Nick angled himself forward a couple of feet, guided the man’s arm
towards his own, and shook it.
‘Nick Steen,’ said Nick.
‘The Taffer,’ replied the man, who was known to all simply as the Taffer.
Although his pale eyes sported no orbs, their cloudy irises burned deep with
an ancient wisdom, Nick sensed. Maybe, Nick wondered then, this was one
of them. One of the last living descendants of the True Welch, that race of
beleaguered Old Ones mercilessly pushed westward by the marauding
Anglo-Saxon hordes back in the early seventeenth century. A noble race of
once-heroic hunter-gatherers, now condemned to scrape a meagre existence
in disparate groups scattered across a craggy grey wasteland known to the
authorities as Wales, many packed cruelly into the blighted badlands of
Cardiff and Swansea, still practising their Old Religion of Ancient
Celticum, trading leeks for soil deposits in the vain hope of a decent
agricultural income one day, all the while hawking loudly into spittoons for
pennies at carnival freak shows.
Here, in the heart of Nulltec, far from the relative security of the
creature’s native bogland, there stood before Nick a living, breathing
example of this oppressed, once mighty civilisation.
The Welchman.
‘I come in peace,’ said Nick, aware that the old chieftain’s glazed leek
could probably fell an ox.
‘You have to watch out for that Scorcher, you see,’ said the Taffer,
coaxing the golden retriever away from Nick’s groin again with a fresh
handful of dog biscuits. ‘Not that I can watch out myself, look you,’ he
laughed, pointing up at his buggered eyes. ‘On account of my eyes, you see.
Or lack of them!’ he roared, loudly.
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Lucky for you, boyo! Because I certainly don’t!’ he roared again, even
louder.
‘I get the picture,’ said Nick.
 ‘What picture? Where?’ the Taffer said, looking blindly around the room.
‘What in God’s name’s a picture, anyway, when it’s at home? I can’t see a
bloody thing, me.’
‘A picture is a visual illustration of something.’
‘And what the bloody hell’s a visual illustration, might I ask? What’s
“visual”? I have no vision. And what’s this “something” you be blathering
on about, boyo? Could be anything with me, that. Given I can’t see a bloody
thing, on account of me having no eyes in my own head, look you.’
Nick felt his temper rising, then saw that the Taffer was no longer
laughing. The old Welchman’s expression had grown suddenly grave.
‘But . . .’ said the Taffer, reaching upward with his free hand to tap the
side of his head. ‘I see all.’
Unnerved, Nick looked away from the Welchman’s cloudy eyes and
watched the dog gobble up its last biscuit, then sit, licking both its testicles
for stray crumbs.
‘Scorcher, is it?’ drawled Nick. ‘An apt moniker. Who, or what, taught
that hound to throw flame?’
‘He’s part of Project Inferno,’ growled the Taffer, moving round behind
Nick to grab the gurney’s handles, inadvertently knocking a large jug of
water to the floor. ‘Oh, now look what I’ve bloody done. If I could look,
that is.’
‘What’s Project Inferno?’ said Nick, attempting to head things off at the
pass.
‘Well, I shouldn’t really be telling you, boyo,’ the man said as he
wheeled Nick over towards the door before slamming him into a
neighbouring wall instead. He widened his mouth considerably for his next
sentence. ‘For the project, you see, is still active.’
Despite the mass of wires fixed to the back of his head, Nick could still
feel a large spray of saliva striking home as the Taffer hawked his unholy
mix of glottal stops and harsh consonants in the direction of Nick’s skull.
‘Project Inferno, you see, is a programme designed to turn domestic animals
into potential arsonists.’
‘As a weapon for the government, I presume?’ asked Nick, prying, as the
Taffer reversed, then slammed him once more into the wall.
‘Nulltec don’t “officially” engage in any kind of nefarious activity, Mr
Steen. Officially, they’re turning these dogs into fire-projecting killers so
we can send them into flooded areas to assist with drainage issues. And we
could do with some of that in Llangrannog, if I’m honest. Which generally,
I’m not.’
Drainage issues? That’s bullshit, thought Nick. Then felt his spine judder
a third time as he was once again rammed into a wall.
‘I can walk, by the way.’
‘No, no, boyo, you sit there. Old Taffer will take you where you need to
go.’
‘Go right about half an inch, then move forwards,’ Nick snapped,
grumpily.
‘And what’s half an inch, when it’s at home?’ replied the Taffer,
nevertheless doing as Nick instructed.
Nick breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, they were moving through the
doorway into the corridor beyond. ‘If that dog’s a fire-projector . . .’ he
began.
‘A flamer,’ interrupted the Taffer, showering Nick’s neck with spit again.
‘That’s the technical phrase.’
‘Flamer,’ Nick continued, trying his best to ignore the shower of saliva.
‘Then how come it was also able to activate the metal clasps on this
gurney?’
‘Like I say, boyo, the project backfired. Scorcher’s developed powerful
teleki—’
‘Please don’t say that word. Or at least give me a towel.’
‘Powerful additional abilities.’
‘Those damned maniacs,’ muttered Nick, to himself.
‘Not all of us.’ The Taffer halted the trolley before shuffling his weight
around it to face Nick head-on.
He wasn’t sure what was about to happen. Had Nick offended the
Welchman somehow? Before he could figure out what he’d done, the Taffer
reached up with both hands to his dead eyes and, to Nick’s horror, plucked
them out. Nick screwed his own orbs shut in revulsion.
‘Look you!’ intoned the Taffer, sternly. ‘Look . . . you . . .’
Bracing himself, Nick opened his eyes again, expecting to see the
Taffer’s dry, empty sockets but finding, instead, a perfectly ordinary pair of
healthy, cobalt-blue peepers.
‘Egg shells, you see,’ said the Taffer, winking at him while dangling his
fake pale blinders on a length of grubby string. ‘Glazed, boyo, like my prize
leek. Llangollen, ’67. Bigger than a bloody bus, it was. Shrunk a bit over
the years, of course. No, I’m not blind at all, boyo . . .’ The Taffer winked at
Nick in mysterious fashion. ‘But I see all . . .’
As quickly as he’d plucked them out, the Welchman popped his ‘blind’
eyes back in and swished his leek clumsily along the corridor again, then
rammed Nick into several more walls.
‘And believe me, boyo, you need eyes in this place,’ said the Welchman,
steering Nick towards the elevator doors.
As he was pushed inside, the gurney striking the door edge several times
on the way in, Nick caught sight of the Taffer’s face staring blindly ahead of
them, reflected back to him in the mirrored wall panel.
‘Look you, Nick Steen,’ the Welchman whispered, gravely, as if suddenly
afraid of being overheard. ‘Remember it well. Look you . . .’

The lift doors opened on to a thin, rectangular-shaped room. Banks of

monitors and computer equipment lined every wall except one, which itself
consisted almost entirely of a wide plane of glass. The Taffer wheeled Nick
up to what he saw was an observation window overlooking a large lecture
theatre below. Nick leaned forward in the gurney and detected rows of
tiered seating leading down to a semi-circular stage. On the distant platform
stood five lecterns, each spot-lit by studio-grade lighting, with a
microphone wired up to each one.
As Nick watched, the seats below him began filling up with various
scientists and technicians, watched by assorted representatives in dark suits,
whom Nick realised formed yet more of Nulltec’s significant security detail.
Evidently an important event of some kind was imminent.
So entranced was Nick becoming with the milling experts below that he
failed to notice another team of assistants simultaneously entering the
observation area behind him.
‘I sincerely hope you will cooperate with Phase Two,’ said Nullman,
approaching from Nick’s rear. The Taffer turned Nick around so he was
facing her. ‘Just so you know, we have Scorcher on standby,’ she added.
‘That mutt takes the damned biscuit, and I mean that literally, Nullman.
Five schmackos were all that stood between my genitals and tomorrow’s
poop bag.’
 ‘The canine’s aggression is largely a side-effect,’ explained the chief
scientist. ‘A result, we believe, of connecting up its genitals to the God
Socket, instead of its tail.’
Nullman stood aside to reveal Dr Valesco approaching from an adjacent
room, wheeling in the device to which Nick had previously been connected.
Several assistants followed the doctor in, carrying the chair itself and the
length of cable protruding from the machine’s lid. As Nick watched, they
began connecting the cable’s socket to the outlet above the chair’s oval head
restraint.
‘We’ll try plugging it in first this time,’ said Nullman. ‘I think the issue
may have been a faulty connection.’
‘Balls,’ said Nick. ‘You supercharged me psychically, Nullman, and you
know it. For what reason? What nefarious purpose am I, and by literal
extension, the God Socket, serving here?’
‘You can plug him in now,’ said Nullman, ignoring him.
‘With pleasure,’ replied Doctor Valesco, squeezing a large glob of
luminescent pink jelly on to Nick’s pate. ‘Conducting gel,’ he said,
enigmatically.
As Nick felt himself start to panic again, he caught sight of Nullman
tugging on a pair of thin surgical gloves. At the bruising snap of swiftly-
released Latex, she ushered Valesco aside and reached out with both hands,
smoothing the gel into Nick’s pate with her fingers in a circular, almost-
sensual motion.
Not again, thought Nick, becoming instantly aroused. Distracted against
his will by Nullman’s cranial massage, Nick shut his eyes, trying hard to
think of Stalkford and ignore her gentle, sensuous squeezing. In this state,
he failed to notice the God Socket, and connecting chair, being wheeled
over to the window behind him.
Then he screamed, eyes snapping open again as he felt himself being
hoisted up from the gurney and into the seat now positioned directly beside
him.
‘What are you doing to me?’
‘Relax, boyo,’ said the Taffer, wheeling the empty gurney aside. Nick
glanced down at the God Socket beside him, hearing the familiar grinding
sound coming from within the box, while intermittent bursts of acrid smoke
escaped around the sealed edge of the riveted cable plate.
 Then what felt like a large metallic toilet-roll tube plunged downward
once more into Nick’s skull, its circular steel blade rooting itself inward
through Nick’s previous incision.
Again his mind went dizzy as the anaesthetic serum contained within the
oval helmet went to work.
When Nick roused his head from drowsiness moments later, Nullman
was beside him, watching the crowd in the lecture hall below. Hearing Nick
fart loudly, she turned to face him.
‘Charming,’ she said. ‘Welcome back.’
‘I’m not in control of my physical faculties,’ said Nick, slurring.
‘Evidently,’ she replied, nodding downward at Nick’s lingering shame.
‘Look, it just won’t go, alright?’ he said, half suspecting Nullman was
manipulating the damned thing via medical means.
‘Please,’ she said, signalling for Nick to look downward at the crowd
gathered in the lecture theatre below. The place was full now, Nick saw, and
there was a palpable air of expectation rising in the hall.
One of Valesco’s assistants flicked a switch on a nearby computer and
two wall speakers angled above Nick’s head began piping in sound from
below.
As the lights in the lecture hall dimmed, Nick observed a grey-haired
scientist walk out on to the stage. The seated audience grew silent.
‘That’s Professor Torch,’ whispered Nullman. ‘The running joke being
that he never runs out of batteries. Which, I must confess, I don’t get.’
Don’t get? Nick stared up at her, incredulous. ‘You can take it from me,
Nullman,’ he said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘That’s funny.’
Below them, Professor Torch stood shuffling papers at one of the
lecterns, then reached into his lab coat for his reading glasses, only to draw
out a flashlight instead.
The audience, and Nick too, burst into violent howls of laughter.
‘That guy’s just got it,’ said Nick, half-choking. ‘He’s just got it.’
Nullman remained silent, unmoved and stony-faced. Christ, thought Nick.
Lighten up, woman.
As Professor Torch feigned sudden recollection, tutting long-sufferingly
to himself, he reached into his other pocket instead and brought out . . . a
second flashlight.
Nick practically doubled up, striking the pane loudly as he laughed.
 ‘Be careful!’ snapped Nullman, suddenly yanking Nick’s hand from the
glass. ‘It’s vital you don’t draw any attention to yourself.’
‘Whatever you say, lady,’ said Nick, rolling his eyes. He felt vaguely
relieved, though. With this level of everyday wry humour around at Nulltec,
maybe being incarcerated in this place wouldn’t be quite so bad, after all.
But his smile dried up as his mind suddenly took in the full implication of
Nullman’s words. ‘What do you mean, don’t draw attention to myself?’
‘This is mirrored glass,’ said Nullman. ‘Meaning you can see them, but
they can’t see you.’
‘Now why would that be important?’ wondered Nick, as he turned his
attention back to the lecture hall. Professor Torch had finally found a pen –
behind his ear, where it had been hiding all along, much to his audience’s
amusement – and was now in the process of introducing five guest speakers
currently waiting in the wings.
‘Turn it up,’ said Nullman.
Valesco’s assistant twisted a dial, increasing the volume of the walled
speakers. Nick craned his neck, listening carefully to the Professor’s speech.
‘. . . for tonight’s winner of the Nullman Prize for Literature is unique in
his field and regarded by many as a ground-breaking author of truly
visionary horror . . .’
Nick glanced up at Nullman. She smiled down at him, then winked.
Unsure what was happening, or about to happen, Nick turned back to the
window with a vague sense of apprehension, mixed with nascent pride at
his own achievements.
‘And yet, of course,’ continued Professor Torch from below, ‘he is
anything but. To discuss Mr Steen’s woeful output, which even now
threatens the very existence of Mankind, and to dissect in full the dearth of
literary quality in his published works, along with their stunningly poor
sales figures of late, please welcome to the stage a gathering of Stalkford’s
most esteemed literary critics.’
Nick felt a rush of repressed fury as five figures entered the lecture
theatre from the stage wings, each clutching a coloured ring-binder in their
hands, along with assorted copies of Nick’s books. One by one, the critics
took their places behind the arranged lecterns and stared out across the
packed assembly.
Nick knew them all. And though they might call themselves critics, Nick
had always referred to them as arseholes. For these five were the most
savage, illiterate hack reviewers he’d ever had the displeasure of being
quoted by. For decades, Nick had been forced to endure a litany of
appalling reviews from all five, year after year, scorned paperback
masterpiece after scorned paperback masterpiece.
They were all pricks.
Though he hated giving these wankers the time of day, Nick could
nevertheless name all five if he had to, and quote verbatim from their
scathing reviews, to boot.
Foremost among them was Jay Jakum, who’d obliterated Nick’s ground-
breaking body-horror novel The Water Boatman, in which a doomed
scientist accidentally turns himself into half a water boatman, and must then
find a way to reverse the procedure while having only oars for hands. Then
there was Bunty Hosewood, the self-styled ‘human mouth’, who’d routinely
decimated Nick’s long-running gothic crime series Frank Stein, PI, even
though she’d apparently grown up reading them all before self-discovering
they were ‘all wrong’.
After her came Nev Whist, a former MA student at Leeds Polytechnic
who’d based his university thesis around Nick’s gothic vampire classic
Vroloks. The thesis had been subsequently published as Total Vroloks (More
Like) and was in short a damning critique of the novel, which Nick only
discovered while browsing its pages, having already signed and publicly
endorsed multiple copies for a modest fee. Sturgeon Rank, who’d famously
burned multiple copies of Nick’s books in the car park behind Stalkford’s
library during a visit to promote his own gardening crime series, came next,
followed almost immediately by Glinda Arrow, a writer of horror fiction for
the Young Adult market, whom Nick was convinced wanted to get inside
Rank’s pants. She frequently stole ideas from Nick’s books, dumbing them
down for her illiterate readership.
Nick had eventually grown so tired of their public takedowns of his
oeuvre that he’d hired a local hitman to bump them all off, only to discover
said hitman was in fact a fraudulent tradesman, and had in reality spent the
entirety of Nick’s deposit on a cheap package holiday for him and his
family, knowing full well Nick wouldn’t be able to sue him for blatantly
reneging on their deal, owing to the potential illegality inherent in its
apparent sanctioning of mass murder.
‘I don’t want to watch this,’ said Nick, as Jay Jakum shuffled the papers
in his hands and began to speak.
 ‘And yet you will,’ replied Nullman.
As Jakum commenced his latest public takedown of Nick’s supposed
‘achievements’, Nick closed his mind, clamping his hands over both ears.
Despite this attempt to muffle the noise from below, he was still able to
distinguish the words ‘excruciating’, ‘risible’ and ‘purple prose’, before his
arms were yanked from his head by Valesco’s men and clamped tightly to
the arms of the chair.
Which is when Nullman said, ‘Press button two.’
Panicked, Nick glanced left, horrified, as Dr Valesco pressed the button
marked ‘More Powerful’.
‘What the hell?’ cried Nick, as a sudden spark of pink flame shot forth
from the God Socket, travelling fast through the connecting cable into
Nick’s head. As the box began to smoke, Nick felt his body convulse with a
violent surge of electrical power, contorting his limbs into unearthly shapes
as a more powerful voltage of energy coursed through his brain. He was
smoking now, like the God Socket beside him, and amid the fumes he felt
himself burning up. A seething rage, centred at first in what felt like the
very depths of his brain, coursed through his veins like a stream of molten
lava, pumping boiling blood through his arteries as the bruised ego within
him swelled to murderous proportions.
Destroy them, said the same voice in Nick’s head. Destroy them all.
No, Nick thought. Because he knew the voice wasn’t his. It was the God
Socket speaking, surely. Some kind of malevolent deity contained in that
small metal box beside him . . . Surely Nick Steen wasn’t capable of such
an evil, destructive force?
But then, hadn’t Nick already invested £100 of his own money on a
failed assassination ploy? Wasn’t this destructive voice in his head in fact
merely a magnified manifestation of those destructive powers of darkness
already lying dormant in his own mind?
Destroy them all.
That voice again. Ordering him. Compelling him. Forcifying him. Nick
fought against his own worst instincts to silence the command, but that
meant that all he could hear was a tidal wave of mocking laughter from
below as each critic read aloud passages from Nick’s books, gleefully
tearing out each offending page before casting it into the baying crowd, like
some macabre trophy of war.
Which ultimately decided the matter.
Nick Steen would destroy them all . . .
 CHAPTER SIX
‘Phase II’

‘Listen to them,’ Nullman whispered into his ear. Nick, eyes wide open,
stared angrily at the scene below, switching focus from Jay Jakum to Bunty
Hosewood now, who was already yelling hoarsely at the gathered crowd,
hurling accusations of chauvinism at Nick’s sci-fi horror classic Cleavager.
Mocking its terrifying concept of a female insect, half Amazonian
warrioress, half praying mantis, that sucked in male prey via its killer
cleavage, then crushed them to a slow, agonising yet softly erotic death, like
a Venus flytrap, but with boobies. Which, Nick recalled proudly, had also
been the book’s tagline.
They were mocking that terrifying premise?
Then it was Nev Whist’s turn to criticise perhaps the greatest and most
challenging novel of Nick’s middle period, Proctologicum. This was an
alarming tale of demonic possession in which cosmetic bowel surgeon
Tanya Waist is transferred to a sinister hospital wing run by Dr Winston
Smithsonian, who convinces her to operate on the supposedly haunted
rectum of the sinister Dr Proctologicum, with disastrous and, according to
Whist’s review, ‘unsavoury’ consequences.
Didn’t the guy realise Nick had based that book on a real-life procedure
his own father-in-law had undergone while still semi-conscious on the
operating table, forced to watch the botched removal of his buttock-based
varicose veins through a nearby camera feed, all the while overhearing
malicious nurses discuss the resultant trouser-stainage which apparently
even the hospital’s industrial boil-wash couldn’t shift?
Destroy them all.
The voice was insistent now, Nick sensed. He had to obey. Had to do its
bidding.
Then it was the turn of Sturgeon Rank, ridiculing Nick’s supposed
contempt for grammar, even though Nick had always made it clear that
grammar worked for him and not the other way round.
Destroy them utterly.
Then Glinda Arrow. That thieving sow who’d stolen the plot of Nick’s
folk-horror novel BytchFynder General two years previously. A story
which, on paper, couldn’t fail to horrify. The bone-chilling faux-historical
account of an outbreak of downward erections in rural seventeenth-century
Suffolk during the British Civil War. In Nick’s mind-shattering vision of a
world-turned upside down, human spermatozoa penetrated the earth’s crust
to impregnate hell-demons, which then rose upward in the form of demonic
royal poodles and harassed Parliamentary procedure with their incessant
yapping. A war-torn kingdom in a plague-addled land, where human
conception was only possible at blasphemous 180-degree angles, with the
afflicted parties seized and burned at the penis by the terrifying Prickfinder
General, who alone knew that it was entirely the fault of their wives.
Glinda Arrow had rewritten Nick’s book from a female perspective,
which had subsequently led to a much-coveted TV adaptation later that
year. Nick’s own self-penned screen adaptation, meanwhile, had inspired a
run of tote bags made by students, depicting a big twig demon on one side.
Of which they’d sold four.
And now here she was, Glinda Arrow, loudly declaiming Nick’s inferior
version of ‘her’ tale.
Destroy them all. Obliterate them. Decimate their hectoring non-entity-
bearing heads. Bring the whole edifice down on their pontificating,
egomaniacal skulls.
He felt it. That surge of power within him again; a source of terrifying
psychic energy emerging from the hidden depths of his brain, spreading
from its dark, fathomless depths in a tidal wave of primitive instinct and
rage. Primal anger at these lowly human gazelles lined up before him,
wholly unaware of their imminent demise. Soon to be quaking like
quivering jelly.
Nick’s waking inner eye saw himself gliding again over the contours of
that vast human face. The terrifying portentum was here. Those sky-blue
eyes, unblinking, uncaring, staring out into the stark impenetrable blackness
of a vast, unknown cosmos towards a lone, distant planet.
A planet it would soon destroy utterly, entirely, totally and completely . . .
And irrevocably.
 ‘He’s wrestling with his R-Complex,’ said Nullman, consulting the latest
stream of ever-changing figures on the computer monitor behind Nick.
Valesco smiled, nodding. ‘In theory, then, it should be fairly soon now.’
Nick barely heard their voices as he focused his mind on the five doomed
speakers below.
Doomed, because Nick Steen was going to kill them.
Kill them, said the voice in his head.
KILL.
OBLITERATE.
DESTROY.
WIPE THEM OUT.
DO YOUR LEVEL WORST.
TEAR THEM A NEW ONE.
No, thought Nick, fighting the urge to destroy. I can’t. I’m not a killer.
I’m not.
YES, YOU ARE. YOU TRIED TO KILL THEM BEFORE, REMEMBER,
SO WHAT’S SO DIFFERENT NOW? TELL ME. WHAT’S SO DIFFERENT
NOW? SEE? YOU DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER.
NOW KILL THEM.
DESTROY THEM ALL.
REND THEIR MISERABLE BRAINS FROM CEREBELLUM TO
CRANIUM. BRING THE SKY ITSELF DOWN ON THEIR POMPOUS,
SMUGGERY-SMIRCHED SKULLS.
Nick watched in horror as the heads of the five speakers started to
pulsate. Subtly, at first. A gentle, almost indistinguishable thickening that
seemed to make each head resemble, for a brief, unsteady moment, cotton
buds dipped in water. Then, all too soon, they were rapidly expanding.
Swelling. Ballooning like inflating party decorations. Until, from Nick’s
position behind the glass pane above them, the five critics resembled a row
of life-sized human Pez dispensers.
What’s happening to me? Nick thought. What’s happening to them, more
like? What the hell am I doing?
It was all down to him. Nick was certain of that. Because despite part of
his brain staring at this ongoing transformation with objective eyes, another
part of his mind, the part that was emerging from the depths of his newly-
awakened psychic soul, was willing these people to their deaths. This was
the part of him that now pumped outward from the brain, having been
energised by the unknown powers of the God Socket beside him;
determining the method of their own destruction. Ballooning the bastards
into oblivion.
Not that Nick particularly cared about them, but he was an author, wasn’t
he? A part-time airline pilot? He didn’t want to end up like some sort of
psychic super-soldier developed by the Nulltec Corporation.
Which is when Nick realised what was really going on. Surely, he’d
inadvertently hit upon the dastardly plan at work in this remote and largely
unknown technical research facility? They were training Nick up, of course.
Fast-tracking his emerging psychokinetic powers to serve them. Fooling
Nick into thinking they were helping him, assuring him that they were here
to seal up the hole in his mind, to plug the gap through which his rampant
imagination was emerging, when all along they had no interest in that at all.
Instead, they were intent on developing his telekinetic powers, exacerbating
their effect and severity in order to turn him into some sort of psychic
killing machine.
No doubt they were using Nick’s buried R-Complex – that deep-rooted
reptilian instinct in the human mind also known as the basal ganglia or
basal nuclei, containing the brain stem, limbic region and the amygdala –
against him in order to use it, in turn, against others.
That was the voice deep inside Nick’s head. The voice of his R-Complex,
that deep-rooted reptilian instinct also known as the basal ganglia or basal
nuclei, containing the brain stem, limbic region and the amygdala.
These bastards were turning Nick’s own R-Complex against him. Using
his own deep-rooted reptilian instinct also known as the basal ganglia or
basal nuclei, containing the brain stem, limbic region and the amygdala,
against his own mind.
DESTROY THEM ALL.
WATCH THESE ARSEHOLES BLOW.
‘No . . .’ muttered Nick as the five heads below him continued to expand
outward, widening as the so-called experts housed within them began to
scream and shriek in horror at their sudden cranial swelling. The assembled
audience gathered in the seats in front of them rose as one, fleeing in blind
panic as they scrambled over seats in an effort to reach the exit doors at the
back of the room. Nick watched as they clambered over each other in a
desperate bid to escape the hideous monstrosities on the stage behind;
surging through the cramped space in shocked and frightened mobs,
inadvertently crushing each other underfoot in a frenzied effort to escape.
But as chaos reigned, the heads of the five speakers continued to grow.
Their bulbous eyes were screwed shut in paroxysms of agony as the intense
pressure in their gargantuan heads increased.
‘They’re about to explode!’ yelled someone in the audience, and with
that, fresh panic ensued. Frantic hands rattled at doors, doctors fought
doctors, and Nick realised in horror that the way out had been blocked. The
exit doors were all sealed. But by whom, the good part of Nick’s brain
wondered. By Nulltec? Had Nulltec themselves locked all the doors?
NO. I LOCKED THEM, YOU FOOL.
‘The psychic power swelling within him has locked all the doors,’ said
Valesco, observing the imprisoned co-workers below them, scrabbling like
crazed rats around the sealed exits. ‘He’s locked them in via psychic
means.’
‘He’s quite dangerous,’ said Nullman.
I AM INDEED. BLOODY DANGEROUS. THAT’S ME. NICK ‘BLOODY
DANGEROUS’ STEEN.
‘No matter,’ Nullman continued, an inquisitive expression on her face.
‘It’s quite fascinating.’
‘We’ll need to boil-wash everyone’s lab coats,’ said Valesco. ‘Brain
matter is even harder to shift than rectal eruptions.’
‘We can buy new lab coats,’ Nullman tutted, shifting her gaze between
Nick’s crazed expression and the chaos unfolding in the hall below.
‘Ease up, boyo,’ whispered the Taffer, suddenly, right in Nick’s ear.
‘Unlock those doors, look you.’
IGNORE THAT WELCH FOOL AND POP THESE HEATHEN.
The voice in Nick’s head was distinct now. A deep, rich, booming
resonance, like Richard Burton’s – or Robert Powell’s, who’d done a fair
number of Nick’s audiobooks over the years, until he’d attempted to up his
fee yet again and Clackett had gone with Joe Swash instead.
POP THEIR BRAINS. BALLOON THEM INTO HIGH HEAVEN.
‘I will,’ replied Nick to himself, concentrating his psychic powers on the
swelling heads below, willing them to expand even more. Urging the taut
skin on their skulls to stretch ever more thinly over their screaming faces;
forcing the blood in their brains to boil and froth in a spinning whirlpool of
cranial death. Nick commanded them to explode.
 EXPLODE, said the voice like Richard Burton’s or Robert Powell’s in
Nick’s head. BURST THOSE BALLOONS.
‘Ease up, boyo!’ whispered that other voice in Nick’s ear, more
frantically now. Whose voice was it? thought Nick. Who used to call him
‘boyo’?
POP THEM. POP THEM NOW.
‘Ease, up, I said, boyo!’
POP. POP. POP.
‘No!’ yelled Nick, suddenly aware of who had been whispering in his ear.
The Taffer, of course!
He looked down. The old Welchman was floundering on the floor beside
him, pretending to scrabble about for his dropped leek. After all this, the
Taffer had come to Nick’s rescue.
Nick screwed his eyes shut against the sight of those swelling, monstrous
heads, which were no longer below him, Nick realised now, but floating
upward, towards the ceiling, appearing to stare directly at Nick through the
mirrored glass, their ties, cravats and necklaces dragging below like lengths
of string at some crazed, demonic funfair.
Nick forced his gaze away from that terrible sight, willing the unleashed
psychic forces within him to surge backward, dammit. Backward. Backward
into that damned box beside him.
‘Back!’ Nick yelled suddenly, blasting the full force of his psychic
powers in the opposite direction, straight back into the God Socket.
The sparking, smoking plug shot upward from Nick’s head restraint amid
a showering geyser of blood, bone and plastic fragments, landing like a
writhing snake on the observation deck floor, crackling and fizzing with
electrical energy as shards of metal wiring cascaded downward on to the
ground around it.
Dazed and drenched by the torrent of matter spattering his frazzled skull
as the laws of gravity eventually kicked in, Nick steeled himself, turning to
confront the scene of appalling devastation he knew awaited him in the
lecture hall below . . .
And saw that he’d succeeded, after all. By some miracle, Nick’s good
side had stopped the horror in time.FN16 The heads hadn’t exploded, after all.
They were all still there, all five of Nick’s critics, bobbing against the
ceiling like giant Mylar balloons.
Swollen, but alive.
 Nick gasped in relief. He was a good man, after all. At some point, he
presumed, their giant heads would deflate, and no doubt they would all be
escorted from the premises, chastened but alive. Hopefully with their egos
suitably bruised. Then things would be better, Nick vowed. They’d learn it
was Nick Steen alone who’d saved them,FN17 and immediately amend their
published critiques of his work via some form of joint official public
retraction. It was going to be okay, after all, Nick thought. He’d single-
handedly saved the day.FN18
Valesco’s voice sounded coldly through the lecture room speakers.
‘Burst them.’
Nick whipped his head around, catching Valesco’s sly grin as the doctor
lowered the microphone from his mouth, and glanced over at Nullman.
‘Phase Two complete,’ she said.
At the sound of gunfire, Nick turned back to the windowpane, watching
in horror as the giant heads were burst into streaking flesh ribbons one by
one. As Nulltec’s security detail went to work with their issued airguns,
what remained of each ballooned critic rocketed madly around the room at
terrifying speeds while the popped head rapidly deflated, two eventually
striking the mirrored glass in front of Nick with a sickening slap, before
descending like shreds of torn rubber to the ground.
If Nick could have grabbed the syringe from Valesco’s approaching hand,
he would have injected himself.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Psychotropia’

The lips of the vast mouth were parted as the plane plunged past, narrowly
avoiding a descent into the dark and imposing chasm between them. Those
vast teeth, Nick saw, were mountainous rocks grinding dust from solar
winds generated by his aeroplane’s arcing death-spin, as Nick wrestled with
the controls of his stricken jumbo. Briefly, he caught sight of the structure’s
giant right upper lateral incisor as he spiralled past its widened jaw. The
position of the tooth was set slightly back in the structure’s broad palate,
just behind what looked to Nick like the upper central incisor and right
upper canine. He couldn’t tell from this height if the lower third molar on
the right-hand side of the colossal jaw he was spiralling away from was
missing or not, but he suspected that it was.
He shuddered in a sudden fit of cosmical horror, remembering again the
hideous reality of this terrifying portentum.
This enormous floating head in the sky was his own.
Yet there was worse to come. For, as Nick’s plane soared further past the
face that was his beyond all doubt now (it was now wearing his glasses),
Nick made out what looked like a vast body floating in the endless black
beneath the colossal sphere he was traversing.
But this body, unlike the head above it, was not his own.
This body, though Nick could barely believe it, was the black, yellow-
spotted body of a gargantuan salamander.
Nick mewed like a choked kitten, his ailing sanity detonated anew by this
awe-inducing revelation.
Then suddenly he woke . . .
. . . to find the vast head staring at him still, its bald pate now a mass of
floating snakes, a bit like a Man-Gorgon.FN19 Yet Nick’s existential
predicament had somehow worsened, for the face confronting him was
semi-transparent, meaning that the terrifying cosmic deity of his
nightmarish portentum had somehow escaped from his subconscious mind
and penetrated the conscious realm too, both of which are technically
housed fairly close to each other inside the brain, yet for practical purposes
might as well be immeasurable distances apart unless one possesses some
sort of psychic key with which to unlock said doors of perception. Nick, he
realised in horror, had evidently now acquired that key.
That awful psychic eye in Nick’s unconscious mind had somehow been
opened . . .
The rest of Nick’s body came to with a start as he began to thrash, the
vast head before him swinging left to right in an identical display of panic.
It was his own reflection.
Nick heard a muffled metallic yanking noise from somewhere below,
followed by a muted gurgling sound.
As a rush of bubbles rose rapidly from beneath, tickling the underside of
his muscular man-breasts, Nick realised he was underwater.
A row of pink lights flared suddenly on either side of his body, and he
found that he was submerged within some form of glass tank; an enclosed
container connecting him via wires and cables to various sensor pads and
monitoring machines on either side.
As the draining fluid level sank beneath Nick’s head, he chattered with
sudden cold and took off his oxygen mask.
The cabling that had hitherto been floating wildly around and over his
head, impressing upon his dreaming brain an image of writhing snakes, now
flopped down over his bedraggled face like drained spaghetti from a
restaurant serving spoon.
‘Five days, ten hours and seventeen minutes. I do believe that’s a record,
boyo,’ said a voice Nick knew only too well as the tank’s plexi-glass doors
suddenly parted. What remained of the fluid drained away through a
plughole in the floor as the Taffer extended his ceramic leek in Nick’s
direction and parted the dripping cables from his face.
‘You’ve been in what they call a sensory deprivation tank,’ spat the
Welchman. ‘And anything over five days is a bloody record, I reckon. Most
folks drown, you know.’
Nick coughed up a mouthful of liquid from his throat. ‘What the hell is
this stuff?’
‘Mainly water,’ said the Taffer. ‘Mixed with bodily fluids and assorted
faecal matter. Five days’ worth.’
 Nick heaved.
‘Grab hold of my leek.’
Nick reached out, clutching the leek with both hands, and felt himself
being tugged out from the tank on to yet another waiting gurney.
Disorientated, yet determined, Nick realised this might be his only chance
of escape, but as he prepared to make a run for it, he caught sight of
Scorcher, the psychic, laser-wielding golden retriever, standing once more
with its face between his feet.
The dog licked its slavering jaws.
‘Not you again,’ said Nick, as the retriever’s eyes glowed a fresh shade of
metallic pink. Nick felt the cabling in his head begin to move.
In a tall mirror opposite, Nick watched as the multiple wires rearranged
themselves into various hairstyles. An initial subtle mullet wasn’t too bad,
Nick thought, and the subsequent rockabilly quiff was a style Nick made a
solid mental note to remember, yet soon these styles morphed into a
frightful Pat Cash-style mane and the kind of tightly curled, frizzy perm
perennially sported by Nick’s estranged wife, Jacinta.
‘Bog off, Scorcher,’ said the Taffer, tossing a handful of dog biscuits into
a far corner of the room. Immediately, the two pink laser jets rearranging
Nick’s cabling suddenly fizzled away, and the sodden clump of wiring
dropped down again over his shoulders as the dog bounded off for its latest
breakfast.
‘Dumb mutt,’ said Nick, flipping it the bird. Except it wasn’t a dumb
mutt, Nick realised, a fact borne out almost immediately as the dog
extended its own front leg and flipped Nick a small mound of fur in the
middle of the front paw.
‘You helped me back, there,’ said Nick to the Taffer, ignoring the dog. He
looked up at the reflection of the Welchman, who began wheeling Nick out
of the sensory deprivation unit and into yet another featureless corridor.
‘Why? By the way, please refrain from smacking me into walls. I know
you’re not really blind.’
The Taffer smacked Nick into a wall. ‘Have to keep up the old
appearances, look you,’ he replied, tapping his massive leek against each
neighbouring wall in a token effort to supposedly judge distance.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ said Nick.
But before the Taffer could provide Nick with an answer, he slowed
down the gurney and flashed his ID card over a sensor in the adjacent wall,
pretending to get it wrong twice beforehand. A hidden door slid open on
their right, exposing a small gangplank that led downward.
As they made their way down, Nick caught sight of a medical poster on
the wall. Beneath the photograph of a masked surgeon levelling a lethal
syringe was a short medical slogan:

Nulltec – Profits Before Ethics

‘Before?’ Nick gasped, his mouth dropping open in shock. Shouldn’t that be
ethics after profits? No, wait, profits after ethics. Or alternatively ethics
before profits? Either of the latter two. But before Nick had time to make a
final decision, a second poster appeared. Above a picture of several
surgeons playing poker for high stakes over a shrouded patient appeared the
slogan:

Nulltec – Flatlining For Your Future

‘But surely there is no future for those who are flatlining,’ queried Nick
aloud. ‘Unless this poster is implicitly stating there will indeed be a future,
but for those who aren’t flatlining, implying that the process of flatlining
itself creates a better future for others, presumably meaning a corporate
pharmaceutical elite benefiting from the illegal trade of human organs
and/or psychotropic drugs, say. Something seems distinctly untoward
around here.’
‘Correct,’ said the Taffer from behind him as they emerged from the
ramp into yet another featureless corridor. ‘Though Nulltec is technically a
research facility, it is in fact more of a shadowy technical research facility.’
Nick wiped the spit from his neck.
‘Though I’d never say this to Nullman’s face, boyo, Nulltec is rumoured
by some to possess certain ulterior motives. Even supposedly employing
morally questionable, shall we say “nefarious”, means to pursue a sinister,
hidden agenda, look you.’
‘I thought as much,’ said Nick, as the Taffer rammed him into another
wall, reversed the gurney, rammed him into the wall again, reversed the
gurney, rammed and reversed again, then wheeled him successfully through
the exit, into a large, rectangular-shaped space divided on one side into
separate rooms.
 Cells, thought Nick, grimly. ‘These are cells,’ said Nick, grimly. ‘I’m
being incarcerated here, after all.’
‘What’s “incarcerated here” when it’s at home?’
‘Imprisoned,’ said Nick, clarifying for the Taffer, whom Nick suspected
was much thicker than him, despite possessing supposed ancient wisdom.
The Welchman ignored Nick, unlocked a door to one of the rooms in
front and wheeled his patient inside. Before Nick could say another word,
the Taffer let go of the gurney handles and retreated back up the ramp,
slamming the door shut behind him.
‘I’m an incarcerat!’ yelled Nick, unable to reach the small window of
thickened glass in the top half of the door behind him in order to thump it
dramatically. ‘An incarcerat! I.e., a prisoner!’
In vain, Nick attempted to slam the adjacent wall instead, then realised
that the damned psychic golden retriever had telekinetically applied
manacles to his arms once more while it had been distracting Nick with that
show-off display of head-cable styling.
‘Damned stupid mutt,’ Nick said. Then was struck by a sudden thought.
If a God Socketed dog was able to perform a range of psychic circus tricks,
then why couldn’t he? After all, his own powers had been hugely enhanced
while connected to the God Socket. Maybe some part of that awesome
telekinetic power lingered on after the event, lying dormant in Nick’s
subconscious psyche, waiting to be tapped at will.
Focusing his mental energies, Nick concentrated on freeing himself from
the metal clasps fastening both wrists to the gurney handles. He really
needed to free himself as soon as possible if he had any hope of escaping
Nulltec, and also because his nether regions were itching like crazy from all
the chlorine they’d evidently been pumping into that sensory deprivation
tank to counter the toxicity of Nick’s bodily emissions.
He screwed his eyes shut and willed – no, commanded – the clasps over
his wrists to undo.
‘Undo, dammit, undo!’ he yelled, giving them both a particularly
piercing glare. But it was no use. Whatever powers he’d previously
possessed had, for the time being, abandoned him.FN20
‘Dammit,’ he said, aloud. Then he slumped back against the trolley,
allowing time for his eyes to adjust to the gloom so that he could examine
the layout of his cell in more detail. Maybe he could find some other
method of freeing himself.
 As the darkness slowly receded, he saw that he’d been confined in what
appeared to be some form of secret medical observation room. The place
was coldly lit by an icy pink light shining from a small monitor-like device
in the middle of the ceiling – evidently a revolving camera of some kind,
Nick figured. As his eyes glanced past it, he discerned two neatly made
beds on either side of the room. Their white sheets and light rose quilting
reminded Nick of a hospital ward, and by the head of each one stood a
small table sporting a jar of water, a plastic tumbler and a novel by some
novelist Nick had never heard of called Garth Marenghi.FN21
Then Nick saw it. In the darkness at the far end of the room, another
light. Merely a faint glow at first, but as the light expanded in size, Nick
realised there was a dark patch at its centre: a solid shadow that gradually
assumed a familiar form. Then Nick realised it was a human figure moving
towards him. A young girl, he deduced from its silhouetted frame, one who
appeared to be almost gliding in his direction, lit from behind by a strange
and almost otherworldly pink light, as if the girl had stepped forth from
some ethereal, heavenly plane.
‘I’m Christabel,’ said the child in a light, high-pitched American accent,
as she finally drew level with Nick. With the pink glow from the overhead
camera device lighting up the child’s front, Nick saw her rear was, in fact,
illuminated by an identical device shining against her from the far end of
the room, and not by the aforesaid ethereal light which had appeared to
confer upon her that strange, celestial glowing. She was around ten years
old, dressed in a pure-white Victorian-style nightdress, with her delicate
facial features resembling a display of finest bone china. In that heavenly
pink glow, she seemed almost like a ghost.
‘Gwendolen . . .’ whispered Nick.FN22
‘No, I’m Christabel,’ said the girl. ‘Like I just told you, silly. And this is
Persephone.’
The child held out one hand, the gown of her nightdress extending
outward with it like an angel’s wings, as a second figure moved towards
Nick. It was another female form, yet less majestic. Far less majestic,
decided Nick. For one thing, the person shambling their way forwards like
Frankenstein’s monster was taller, heavier, as if it had been gorging on pizza
for two weeks solid, and singularly failing to glow mystically like the
younger girl.
 Instead, the pale pink light from the rear camera device seemed to clash
with the unpleasant prism of horrendously matched colouring coming from
the girl’s messily tied-back hair. As she slapped a light switch on an
adjacent wall, a stark strip light flickered on overhead, revealing a sulky-
looking teenager sporting faded denim and an evident attitude problem, if
those streaks of multicoloured dye in her hair and general air of tardiness
was anything to go by.
‘Pull yourself together,’ said Nick, forgetting this wasn’t a daughter he
was talking to.
‘Screw you,’ said the girl.
Nick felt a rush of adrenaline coarse through his veins at the smell of
battle, but was caught short by a sudden burst of unexpected, angelic
laughter.
‘Tee hee,’ giggled Christabel. ‘Persephone’s always grumpy after a big
sleep.’
‘She should wake the hell up and scrub that oily face,’ said Nick. ‘Then
comb her bloody rug and scour what’s left of her teeth. With a brace like
that, irregular brushing is a health hazard for anyone in close proximity.’
Chastened, Persephone looked down gruffly at her shoes, scuffing the
ends of her trainers against the ground, forcing both hands deep into her
baggy pockets.
‘Careful,’ said Christabel. ‘Don’t make Persephone mad. Otherwise . . .’
‘Otherwise what?’ snapped Nick, having had just about enough of the
older kid’s lip.
‘No!’ yelled Persephone, suddenly. ‘I won’t do it! I won’t! I won’t!’
‘Easy, Persephone! Try to relax!’ squealed Christabel.
‘Won’t do what?’ said Nick, unnerved by the older girl’s sudden panic.
‘What the hell’s her problem?’
‘She’s disobeying them,’ said Christabel.
‘Disobeying who?’ Nick was appalled at such an act, even if he wasn’t
yet sure exactly who the girl was disobeying. But hell, if this had been his
daughter, and she dared disobey anything he’d commanded, he’d have
packed her off again to that summer holiday club she’d loathed going to last
year. ‘Who is she disobeying?’
‘The voice,’ said Christabel. ‘The voice in her head. We have to give her
more time.’
 Strewth, thought Nick. Why did he always end up having to give young
people some damned leeway?
‘The voice is telling her, you see . . . Ordering her . . . to . . . to . . .’
‘What?’ Nick yelled, losing patience with Christabel as well now. If there
was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was a case of double double-X
histrionics. ‘What is it telling her to do?’
‘To twist you!’
Nick look confused. ‘Twist me? What the hell’s twisting me when it’s at
home?’ He hated copying the Taffer character’s idiosyncratic phraseology,
but in this case it was an apt phrase.
‘Like this!’ snapped Persephone, yanking both hands from her pockets in
a swift, sudden motion. She aimed both palms towards Nick’s neck, and all
at once, he felt the shock of a violent tugging on his throat muscles. He
grabbed himself with both hands, unsure what was happening to him as he
felt his head shift leftward of its own accord. Despite his attempts to wrestle
it back in the other direction, Nick’s throat sinews began to burn, wrenching
themselves sideways in an opposing flanking motion. In horror, Nick
caught sight of a manic gleam in Persephone’s eyes as his head began
passing the angle of no return, threatening to twist his upper crown
backward to face the door he’d just entered by.
‘Leave him be, Persephone!’ commanded Christabel in a particularly
wise-sounding voice for a small child. But her instruction fell on deaf ears.
Nick sensed his ligatures continuing to stretch, the bone muscle starting to
tear free, cell by cell, as his head commenced twisting backwards, like an
owl’s, but with none of an owl’s natural coping mechanism for this
unholiest of movements.
‘My . . . my neck . . . it’s turning . . . twisting . . .’ gasped Nick. ‘Twisting
. . . around . . . twisting back to front . . .’ His voice became a mere garble
as his eyes started to see stars.
‘Persephone!’ cried Christabel again, in an even more wise-sounding
voice for a small child than before, and at that moment the pressure on
Nick’s neck suddenly lifted. He collapsed forward, gasping, his head
turning round again with an unpleasant crackling sound as his loosened
throat gristle slowly realigned itself.
‘Right, you’re grounded,’ he croaked, hoarsely. ‘That was completely
unacceptable behaviour.’
 ‘It’s what Persephone does,’ said Christabel. ‘She’s a Twister. A sort of
“psychic weapon”, so they say. That’s why the nice lady from Nulltec keeps
her in hospital here.’
My God, these kids were naive.
‘Is that what she told you?’
‘Mrs Nullman says Persephone’s powers might be . . . “exploited” . . . by
a “sinister government agency” . . . That’s why nice Doctor Valesco and his
funny pals have to keep her in here until they can make a magic pill to stop
the twisting.’
‘You two dolts,’ said Nick. ‘Nulltec is that secret and sinister government
agency. You’re prisoners here. Nulltec are training you, and me, as potential
psychic weapons. They’ve been trying to turn me into some kind of
telekinetic super-soldier primed to destroy all before me via thought alone,
like some colossal human Demi-God or Destroyer of Worlds.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ laughed Christabel. ‘You’ve got it wrong, silly.
After all, we get milk at bedtime, and they say the cookies will be here
sometime next year.’
‘And I bet they give you “sleepy” sweets, right?’
‘Yes!’ squealed Christabel, clapping her hands with glee. ‘You only have
to eat one or two, and you can sleep for a whole month! Then there’s cups
of weak squash on cold days, and a hot meal every week!’
‘What are you in here for?’ Nick asked Christabel, needing to
ascertainFN23 what her own special power was. ‘What’s your gift?’
‘They say I can make everyone in the world better,’ said Christabel. ‘No
matter how poorly they might be. Just by me thinking it.’
My God, thought Nick. This kid was a Healer.
‘You can cure illness?’ he asked.
‘Yes, silly!’ laughed Christabel. ‘So that no one ever has to die or
projectile vomit again. They call me a Mender.’
‘“Healer” sounds better,’ said Nick, staring at her in awe. He tried to
imagine a world without projectile vomiting. It was insane. Unbelievable.
Utopia. Here Nulltec were, in possession of a child who could cure every
disease known to Man. Particularly projectile vomiting. Hell, she was a
miracle worker. The New Messiah. No wonder Nulltec were keeping her
under lock and key. They stood to make a fortune out of this. Either by
exploiting the unsuspecting Christabel in order to manufacture an ultimate
‘cure for all ills’ pill, or else by making damn sure she never got anywhere
near the vicinity of their competitors.
Yeah, thought Nick. Nullman and Valesco would make damn sure of that,
alright.
He looked upon the two girls with sudden pity. These dumb schmucks
had no idea at all what was being done to them.
‘Look,’ he said, gravely. ‘In fact, listen. Nulltec are lying to you. They’re
exploiting your psychic powers. They’re imprisoning Persephone here so
she becomes an International Psychic Twister Assassin, and you, Christabel,
are being cut off from the outside world so that you can’t become a world-
famous New Messiah with assorted book deals and a range of best-selling
yoga and/or meditation videos. You have to escape from here.’
‘But why, Nick?’ said Christabel, becoming slightly agitated. ‘Nulltec are
our friends.’
‘Really, Christabel? Do “friends” neglect to mention how much you
could earn from a televised tour of public healings?’
‘No . . .’
‘Do friends fail to point out how much you’d earn by writing The Bible
2: Return of the Bible?’
‘I guess not.’
‘Do these so-called “friends” fail to introduce you to a writer they also
have here in captivity who could easily ghost-write said Bibular sequel for
you, for a modest fee plus healthy royalties percentage?’
‘No, they’ve never mentioned it, Nick,’ said Christabel, concerned.
‘Precisely,’ he replied. ‘And for that reason, we have to get out of here.
Tout suite.’
Nick focused his psychic energies on the manacles binding his hands and
feet to the trolley again, trying once more to force them apart. But the metal
plates encasing his limbs rattled only slightly. He just didn’t possess enough
power to break them yet without his head being wired up to the God Socket.
Then a thought struck him. Persephone . . . Maybe she could twist his
manacles.
‘You!’ he barked at her. ‘Get off your arse and twist these.’
‘Twist what?’ Persephone murmured under her breath, rolling eyes at
some imaginary friend.
‘These manacles, stupid.’
She glanced over at Nick’s manacles, then looked up at him, defiantly.
 Christ, he’d had enough of this attitude from his own daughter.FN24
‘Fine,’ he sighed. ‘I’m sorry for mocking your mouth-brace. It’s actually
very beautiful,’ he continued, thinking on his feet, even if he didn’t mean
any of what he was saying. Hopefully Persephone wasn’t a mind-reader as
well. ‘It’s the sort of mouth-brace pop stars across the land would find
extremely attractive, I’m sure.’
Persephone’s cheeks blushed red all of a sudden, and then her face lit up
in a natural smile. With a sudden burst of focused energy, the manacles on
Nick’s wrists and shins twisted at the hinges, then fell to the ground,
broken.
Nick stretched his arms outward, flexing the muscles. ‘Well done. You
really do need to shift that bit of cabbage, though,’ he added, tapping his
own teeth to indicate the offending area. ‘Okay, let’s find a way out of
here.’
‘But Nick,’ whimpered Christabel, clearly still agitated. ‘You must be
wrong. Nulltec are nice.’
‘Bollocks they are,’ said Nick, resolutely failing to mind his language.
These kids needed to grow up. And fast. If the New Messiah couldn’t
handle a little blue vernacular in the heat of battle against a powerful foe,
she’d have to lump it. Shape up or ship out. ‘They want to destroy our way
of life, princess. So let’s haul ass and bust this joint.’
‘But they gave me a doggy!’ squealed Christabel, tears of joy rolling
from her eyes as the cell door suddenly swung open behind Nick. In
bounded a panting, tail-wagging golden retriever.
‘Scorcher . . .’ whispered Nick.
The dog leaped up at Christabel, licking her cheeks affectionately, then
danced about her in giddy circles, yelping playfully.
‘That thing’s a killer!’ said Nick. ‘It tried to burn my nappy sack.’
‘It’s the best doggy in the whole wide world!’ sang Christabel, hugging
the retriever close to her chest, nuzzling her face into its neck.
It was now or never, Nick realised. He had to make a sudden grab for the
mutt’s rear legs, while it was distracted, then hurl it hard against the wall.
Dash its brains out in one slam so that damned kid wouldn’t have a chance
to heal it.
Sure, it would be traumatising, but Nick was used to the sound of female
screaming. He’d get over it.
 Gathering his strength, Nick breathed in tightly and lunged himself
forcefully at the animal.
But failed to move an inch. In horror, he realised the manacles on his
wrists had reattached themselves without him even realising it.
Reattached themselves? Or had they been reattached by something else?
As he glanced over at Scorcher, the dog’s eyes flashed pink at him.
Then the manacles over Nick’s legs locked, too.
 CHAPTER EIGHT
‘The Medusa Project’

As the elevator doors began to slide shut, Nick screamed a final warning at
the two girls cheerily waving him goodbye from the far end of the corridor.
‘You’re prisoners!’ he yelled through the closing gap. ‘Incarcerats!’
‘Come back and play another day!’ said Christabel, as the psychic
retriever’s face grinned back at Nick from between the two girls. ‘We can
take Scorcher on a picnic! To another cell!’
‘You fools!’
‘Easy, boyo,’ said the Taffer, behind Nick. The Welchman had turned up
in the nick of time, just as Scorcher was leaping on to his gurney with the
clear intention of flambéing Nick’s personal pipe outlets. The Taffer had
yanked Nick’s gurney back into the main corridor, keeping the dog at bay
with his giant, hardened leek.
As the lift doors finally shut upon them, Nick glared at the Taffer’s
reflection in the mirrored panelling.
‘What the hell was all that for?’ he yelled. ‘Why take me on a detour via
the Nulltec holding cells? I already knew this place had a sinister side.’
‘I got the wrong bloody room, boyo,’ said the Taffer. ‘Thought I was on a
different floor. It’s these bloody eyes, you see. I can’t see a damned thing, I
can’t.’
‘Look, the Taffer, I know you’re not blind. You pulled those plastic
eggshells out once and dangled them in front of my face, remember?’
‘Remember? Oh no, boyo. Me, I cannot remember a bloody thing, look
you. Got the memory of a goldfish, I have.’
Nick closed his eyes and sighed deeply. Why was this guy pretending he
was mad as a brush, when Nick knew he was all too sentient behind the
mask? For what reason? Why had he wheeled Nick down to these cells?
Was it merely to keep up the pretence of being an annoying blind
Welchman with a stupid hat?
 Unless the Taffer had suspected that Nulltec were growing suspicious of
him? Maybe they’d seen him remove those false eyes in the lift via a hidden
camera and he was therefore trying to cover up his mistake by acting extra
stupid?
Nick watched a small digital display in the side of the elevator wall
change as they ascended through the building. Beside each floor number
they were passing, there appeared a small description of the corresponding
floor level. Though the information vanished almost as soon as it appeared,
Nick was able to glimpse several names against the corresponding wards
they were rising through. Floor 7 (Genetic Manipulation Ward and
Kennels); Floor 8 (Mutant Baby Wing: Important – Crèche Closed); Floor
10 (Coma Zone, Illegal Organ Transplants plus Mailing Department);
Floor 12 (Virus Outbreak Contamination and Decontainment Wing; Floor
13 (Abandoned/Derelict Space plus Equipment Cupboard (self-operating));
Floor 14 (ISEEU); Floor 15 (OT 1 – Routine Disfigurements and Shock
Recovery); Floor 16 (OT 2 – Cloning, Ocular X-Ray and Bodyswap); Floor
17 (Human Recycling Plant plus Restaurant-Café); Floor 19 (General
Insanity).
As the lift reached Floor 24, marked ‘The Medusa Project’ on the lift’s
digital display, Nick was suddenly struck by a terrifying realisation.
When they’d first dragged him into this place, he could have sworn
Nulltec only had three levels. Arbitrarily shifting geography was one of
Roz’s frequent editorial criticisms of his fiction, and though Nick was loath
to acknowledge his former editor’s critical observations, he did wonder now
whether Nulltec was indeed a genuine facility, or merely another bizarre
figment of his own escaping imagination.
The frightening thought occurred to Nick that he could well be trapped
inside one of his own stories again, albeit a tale that had evidently yet to be
written. For Nick knew there was always the possibility that he’d dreamed
this place up in some ideas notebook his conscious mind had long since
forgotten.
‘How come there are twenty-four floors?’ he asked the Taffer. ‘There
were only three when I arrived.’
‘Well, boyo, these top floors are part of ongoing stealth experiments,’
said the Taffer. ‘From the outside, they’re invisible to the naked eye. Which
is why I, more than anyone else, look you, cannot see them.’
 Nick grew a little calmer. At least, then, on this occasion, he wasn’t living
in a nightmare of his own making. Even if he was technically still living in
a nightmare of his own making. Ultimately, he guessed Nulltec had
abducted him as a direct result of his leaking imagination, which itself had
been brought about by his own diabolical lust for a possessed typing
implement intent on conquering, then destroying, earthly reality. But even if
all this was still a nightmare of his own making, this particular nightmare
within a nightmare of his own making was not a nightmare of his own
making. And for that, Nick was grateful.
‘What’s the Medusa Project?’ asked Nick as the Taffer wheeled him out
on to Floor 24. Another lengthy, endless, white-walled corridor led off into
the distance.
‘Top-secret security wing, boyo. Where I should have taken you in the
first place. Instead of those cells downstairs. Why, if Nulltec knew I’d taken
you down to th—’ The Taffer gasped loudly, slamming a large hand over
his mouth.
‘Relax,’ said Nick, sensing there may indeed have been secret purpose in
the Taffer’s supposed ‘mistake’. For some undisclosed reason, the bulky
assistant had brought Nick down to the lower cell level without anyone else
in the building knowing.
Nick thought again about those two imprisoned youths. While both were
deeply annoying, they were effectively dumb innocents. At their age, Nick
figured, they ought to be left alone by sinister government agencies.
Ridiculed, sure. Punished, certainly. No one likes an attitude problem. But
to keep them in a top-secret research facility against their will, simply to
manipulate, exploit or conceal their own latent psychic powers – that took
the proverbial biscuit. Nick vowed to break out of Nulltec and rescue them,
if he could. And if he couldn’t, whatever. The main thing was for him to get
out and alert the authorities. Then they could rescue the girls. If it was even
worth their while.
Nick’s gurney reached the end of the corridor, pausing outside a room
marked ‘Observation Deck’. He realised the Taffer hadn’t bashed him into a
single wall along this particular corridor. Either this floor was so secret that
there was no need for any hidden cameras, or the Taffer was trying to tell
him something.
‘Look you,’ whispered the Taffer behind Nick, as he ran his ID card
through another slotted lock, sliding the door in front open. ‘Look you . . .’
 That would be it then, Nick thought, nodding to himself. A subtle
warning by the Taffer to look around and keep watch for something.
Evidently, the place he was entering now was a particularly threatening
environment, one where no doubt the toughest, most challenging chapter of
Nick’s incarceration tale would play itself out, one way or t’other, for better
or worse, this way or that, by high road or low road.FN25 It felt to Nick like
the culmination of some sprawling heroic narrative. An epic journey
beginning to near its dramatic conclusion. A climactic denouement in
waiting, with Nick as its chief protagonist, and Nullman, say, as its main
antagonist. The whole shebang was coming to a head, Nick figured. To use
a writing analogy that he felt was somewhat apt, given Nick was a writer by
trade, he sensed that he was heading for the final few chapters in this
unfolding tale of real-life terror. One that, if this were chapter eight, say,
would most likely be concluded around chapter twelve.
Not that he was in the old Act-Three doldrums just yet, to continue his
writing analogy, but he was certainly nearing it. And if Nick’s instincts were
right, and oft they were, then said doldrums would soon be rearing their
ugly head, he feared. Sooner than he wanted them to, that’s for sure – in,
say, chapter nine or ten of that figurative tale he felt he was inhabiting.
The Taffer pushed Nick through the open door on to a vast observation
deck.
‘So this is why the door was marked “Observation Deck”,’ Nick said as
his gurney travelled through the room, once again in awkward, directionless
arcs as the Taffer swiftly rediscovered his official ‘blindness’. The vast
room was not dissimilar to the main operating centre of Stalkford Airport’s
Flight Control Tower, which Nick was somewhat familiar with having used
it for several illicit physical liaisons with Julia Thurscott (finally, he
remembered her surname), and not completely dissimilar to the observation
area overlooking the lecture theatre he’d been wheeled into earlier on.
But this room was larger than both. As if to suggest that whatever events
were about to transpire might be eerily similar to, yet infinitely worse than,
anything that had come before. As Nick felt a familiar rush of anxiety
flooding his mind, he thought back to those recurring psychological
harbingers of doom: those terrifying portentums that had been continually
plaguing his mind.
Somehow, Nick felt, this room was to be the final piece in that ongoing
psychic puzzle. Whatever transpired here in the next hour or two would, he
felt sure, decide whether Nick escaped or remained here a prisoner – an
incarcerat. It might even decide whether he, nay Stalkford, too, mayhap
e’en the world, lived or died.
Nick forced himself to take in his surroundings while he still had time.
Against one side of the room stood a vast wall of reinforced glass, looking
out in a south-westerly direction over miles of unbroken countryside. In the
far distance, beneath the red sun now setting in the evening sky, he spied a
familiar jagged crust of black jutting upward against the horizon like a well-
picked scab.
Stalkford City.
He shifted his gaze to take in the rest of his surroundings. To the left and
right of the building he was imprisoned within grew vast swathes of thick,
primeval forest. Chokewood to the west, and neighbouring that, the old,
abandoned mine (which, even more spookily, had never been inhabited in
the first place). Beyond it, Nick could just make out traces of the Great
Widdershins Pathway running straight through the still-unexplored depths
of Stalkford’s Wyrden Wodelands.
‘A glorious view,’ said Barbara Nullman, walking towards Nick from the
far side of the space. Nick turned and saw, on the wall behind them, the
now-familiar sight of banked computer terminals and beeping technical
equipment. And, in front, wheeled in once more by Valesco’s assistants, that
familiar-looking casket, patched up on one side now with masking tape and
an inverted coat hanger stuck into the top, just in front of the revolving
beacon, with a disorderly array of metallic netting, resembling a mass of
silver tinsel, dangling around the back.
The God Socket.
‘If you think you’re plugging me up to that thing again, you’ve got
another think coming,’ said Nick.
‘Wrong,’ Nullman replied. ‘You’ve got another think coming. Quite
literally.’
She took hold of the gurney’s handle and wheeled Nick round again so
that he was looking out once more into the open countryside.
‘Phase Three of our experiment,’ she continued, ‘will build on previous
achievements and turn you, Mr Steen, from a reluctant work-in-progress
into Nulltec’s first fully fledged psychic super-soldier.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Nick, unable to think of anything more cutting owing to
all the stress he’d been under.
 ‘We’ve been tweaking the God Socket quite extensively while you’ve
been floating in that sensory deprivation tank and recovering what little
remained of your sanity.’
She was right there, Nick conceded. He did feel slightly saner than
before. Even if the knowledge that he’d been imbibing his own effluence
over and over for several days now threatened to destroy that very element
of sanity he’d recovered.
‘I think you’ll find we’re quite prepared for any psychic ‘resistance’ you
may feel you’ve retained,’ said Nullman. She pointed abruptly outward into
the stretch of open countryside beyond them. ‘Look out there, Mr Steen.
What do you see?’
‘Stalkfordshire,’ said Nick.
‘And that small black stain on its horizon?’
‘My home. Well, Stalkford City.’
‘And beyond Stalkford City?’
‘The outskirts of Stalkford City?’
‘And beyond the outskirts of Stalkford City?’
‘Landfill?’
Nullman sighed, becoming annoyed. ‘And beyond the landfill?’
Nick finally twigged. ‘Ahh, the airport.’
‘Correct, Mr Steen,’ said Nullman, clicking her fingers at a team of
scientists filing in from a door opposite. ‘Stalkford Airport. Scene of your
many miraculous “survivals”. A place where, in precisely five minutes from
now, a privately chartered jumbo jet will take off on an initial flight path
across the width of airspace beyond this very window.’
‘Good job I’m not flying it,’ quipped Nick.
‘In a way, Mr Steen, you will be,’ replied Nullman, looking down at him
with the strangest of smiles on her face. ‘Perhaps you will not be physically
piloting that plane towards its ultimate destruction, but you will certainly be
doing so mentally.’
So that’s what Nullman had planned. She was going to use the God
Socket to make Nick bring the plane down in front of them all by thought
alone! She would use the box’s godlike power to supercharge his dormant
psychic powers again, drawing on his base instincts of anger and rage to
force the stricken jumbo down into a muddy field.
‘I won’t do it,’ said Nick. ‘And you can’t make me. I guess you think that
because I’ve already caused the deaths of thousands of airline passengers, a
few hundred more won’t make much of a dent in my numbed-by-necessity-
and-therefore-suitably-assuaged conscience. But you’re wrong, Nullman.
This time, I’ll be fighting back.’
‘Naturally, Mr Steen,’ said Nullman. ‘However, this particular flight
contains, among its many passengers, one travelling by the name of
Rosalind Bloom.’
Roz!
Nick gasped audibly, inwardly. Roz was on that plane! He calmed
himself, forcing himself to think things through before giving way to panic.
If Roz was indeed on that plane, then Nullman’s intention was presumably
to give Nick the opportunity to destroy his former editor.
In that case, he had nothing to worry about.
‘Bad luck, Nullman,’ Nick said. ‘Roz and I are friends now. We’re united
in our battle to destroy all the demonic lifeforms my leaking brain has
unleashed. Hell, with my help, she rescued me from the terrifying Prolix,
where I got flayed by hell-demons.’
‘But she is nevertheless your former editor,’ said Nullman. ‘You forget
that with our advanced technical machinery here at Nulltec, we are able to
access your innermost thoughts.’
Nick sneered at her. ‘Well, if you think putting my former editor on that
plane will somehow stoke up feelings of repressed anger and rage at all the
incorrect advice she’s given me over the years, you can think again. You’re
forgetting that I’ve roundly rejected all Roz’s ideas, bar one or two that I
was legally required to implement in order to stave off a pressing lawsuit.
We’ve also slept together figuratively, numerous times. There’s no way my
subconscious urges, however dark or ruthless they may be, would ever
dream of bringing that plane down. You’re placing far too much faith in the
deep-rooted reptilian instinct also known as the basal ganglia or basal
nuclei, containing the brain stem, limbic region and the amygdala that we
call the R-Complex, Nullman. And you’re forgetting those other two
complexes, N and S. N for Nick and S for Steen. They’re not technically
actual complexes in the human brain, but they’re there, believe me. So go
tell that to your so-called God Socket.’
Nullman smiled gently, nodding. ‘Do you know what a reptilian instinct
actually looks like, Mr Steen?’ she said, snapping her fingers at Valesco.
Nick watched as the sinister-looking physician removed a small jar from
a nearby fridge unit and walked over towards them. He was smiling, almost
malevolently, Nick noticed, while Nullman continued speaking.
‘Do you know what the R-Complex actually is?’ she said.
Nick stifled a gasp as Valesco reached Nick’s gurney, held out the jar and
lifted off the lid. Then Nullman reached into her pocket and drew forth a
pair of forceps.
She reached into the jar with them and removed a glistening, writhing
object from the interior. It was a long, steaming piece of animate scaled
matter, jet black in hue with an unholy peppering of bright yellow spots,
looking much to Nick like a severed reptilian’s tail.
The tail . . . of a salamander.
‘That lives in the human mind?’
‘It is the human mind,’ said Valesco, ‘at its most primitive.’ He waggled
the forceps playfully, forcing the specimen’s tail to rear upwards and lunge
in vain at his wrist with cold, reptilian fury. ‘One of these specimens forms
part of every single human brain.’
‘And this particular example, if you recall,’ said Nullman, moving round
to place her burgundy nails once more on Nick’s cheeks, ‘was taken from a
murderous, psychopathic killerFN26.’
Good gravy, thought Nick, in sudden alarm. Were they planning to do
what he thought they were planning to do? Would they really do that? Was
that what they were planning? Was what they were planning to do really the
thing Nick thought they were planning to do? Would they really do it? What
it was they were planning? Would they do that?
‘Thanks, I’ve seen enough,’ said Nick, hoping to God Nullman would
never, ever, throw that damned thing in his direction. For that was the thing
Nick thought they were planning to do. For Nick had the terrifying notion
that were Nullman ever to do such a thing – to hurl that nauseating R-
Complex Salamander’s tail-type monstrosity in Nick’s direction – then he
might completely lose the ability to concentrate on any major task of
phenomenal importance he was currently engaged in carrying out,
potentially threatening not only his own life and those of others in his
immediate vicinity, but also the ultimate success of said gargantuan task. A
task, say, like some essential endeavour undertaken towards the end of a
titanic struggle, to use his own writing analogy again, or the climactic
denouement of some stupendous work of horror fiction, say. That kind of
thing. And were Nick ever to be involved in a particularly high-stakes
pattern of events, like the thrilling, action-packed climax of some
stupendous slice of metaphorical grade-A horror fiction, and Nullman threw
that beastly reptilian tail in his direction at the worst possible moment, Nick
firmly suspected such a deadly act might destroy him utterly, resulting in
the total, irrevocable failure of said task’s completion, plus probable, nay
guaranteed, destruction of the entire world.
‘No, we’re not going to do that,’ said Nullman, grabbing hold of Nick’s
head. ‘You forget, we can read your mind, Mr Steen, and know you’d be
prepared for such an eventuality. Instead, we’re going to implant this
extracted R-Complex immediately, deep within your own brain.’
 CHAPTER NINE
‘Phase III’

Nick screamed as Valesco’s men helped Nullman wrestle his head into a
stationary position. Then Valesco himself held the forceps out in front of
Nick’s face, forcing him to watch the dangling R-Complex as it writhed and
stabbed both ends viciously in his direction.
‘It wants in,’ said Valesco. ‘It wants into your head. To feed on your
mind.’
‘Don’t do this,’ said Nick, understanding at last the full dreaded import of
his recurring portentum. He recalled the image of that vast, cosmic
salamander dangling below his own colossal face. That had been a message
to Nick’s mind, he now realised, that earthly destruction was close at hand.
Devastation and calamity on an unimaginable scale. And Nick had failed to
heed the message. Now the end of Stalkford was going to be Nick’s fault
entirely. For as soon as the dreaded R-Complex in the grip of Valesco’s
forceps entered Nick’s brain, he doubted he would have the strength left to
combat its most destructive instincts once it had paired up with his own
personal writhing R-Complex. And if said own personal writhing R-
Complex combined forces with the one originally belonging to that
murderous psychotic from whom it had been extracted by Nullman; if those
two R-Complexes were to join forces and battle against Nick’s kinder, more
mammalian instinct, then who knew what that might mean for Roz,
Stalkford, and slightly beyond Stalkford?
‘Don’t put that thing in my brain!’ screamed Nick. ‘Please!’
They put that thing in his brain.
As the assembled scientists held Nick’s head still, and Nullman distracted
the author by slightly interfering with him physically again, Valesco
reached up over Nick’s exposed pate to the spot where the cranial supports
had drilled that hole into his skull, and dropped the R-Complex in.
 Instantly, Nick felt a deep squirming in his mind. A sudden flurry of
aggressive swishing as the R-Complex thrashed and darted among the
tangled folds of intersecting brain matter in search of its natural rival.
Meanwhile, Nick’s head was clamped shut again as Valesco’s men
connected his cranium to the oval head restraint, which itself had been
connected directly to the back of Nick’s gurney in the meantime so that they
wouldn’t have to lift him into a separate chair again.FN27 As they locked the
gurney’s wheels in place, Valesco gave the empty jar to a nearby
unimportant orderly, of whom there were several now entering the
observation deck from various hitherto unmentioned connecting rooms.
They began generally milling about unsuspectingly.
Nullman looked down at her watch. ‘Right on schedule.’
Nick looked out at the sky beyond the observation window, which was
suddenly tinted with an unholy blood-red hue. Was it dusk already? Maybe
it was – maybe it wasn’t. For Nick suddenly suspected that the blood-red
tint colouring the vast stretch of open sky was precisely that.
Ichor.FN28
Then they were fighting already. Deep inside Nick’s brain, he could feel
his internal R-Complexes thrashing. Coiling themselves around one
another’s tails in an effort to dominate each other and also Nick’s
subconscious brain. That, or they were copulating. After all, most life forms
other than human beings didn’t care where or when they did it. Or why, for
that matter. Nick was eternally surprised at how many pigeons, foxes and
rabbits simply went at it daily like a harem of horny heathens in his local
churchyard. He often used to visit the place for inspiration when writing a
subtle gothic chiller, but in the end had become so distracted by the daily
displays of bestial flagrant debauchery that he’d simply given up trying to
write anything creepy and concentrated instead on unholy Satanic-based
horrotica. Which had ultimately got him banned from the premises himself,
while God’s heavenly creatures were still blithely going at it on top of the
family crypt of some well-known local dignitary.
A sudden primal howl sounded from a distant void. The cry of the
serpent, Nick thought, poetically, knowing, there and then, that the invading
R-Complex had eaten his own. Consumed it entirely. Was perhaps already
digesting its sloppy innards inside its own sloppy innards. Maybe it had
even shat out what was left of Nick’s reptilian instincts already, through the
rear head-flue of Nick’s mind.
 DESTROY.
That voice again, Nick thought, suddenly terrified. The voice of his
deepest, darkest, most primitive instincts.
DESTROY THEM ALL.
Was it even him anymore? Nick looked out through the glass and saw the
plane ascending rapidly from Stalkford airport. The aircraft was currently
only a small speck in the far distance, yet one that would soon be getting
closer and larger by the second. And Nulltec wanted Nick Steen to bring it
down.
They demanded he bring it down. Despite all he held dear.
‘I won’t do it!’ Nick yelled. ‘Even though your R-Complex has eaten my
own R-Complex, I just won’t do it. And that’s my final word on the matter.’
‘You will,’ said Nullman, turning to face Dr Valesco, who was standing
calmly, once more, beside the God Socket. His finger hovered over button
three. The button marked ‘Even More Powerful’. ‘We simply need to give
you a little nudge.’
‘I await your instruction, Dr Nullman,’ Valesco said, grinning slyly as his
assistants stepped away from Nick’s side, clearing the immediate area
around the God Socket.
‘I’ll be coming for you as well,’ said Nick to Valesco, grimly.
All at once, he felt free. Unimpeded. Powerful.
ALL POWERFUL.
He could fight back against them all, no problem. He could let that plane
go past them easily. No way would he send it spiralling down into a fiery
abyss in the field in front of them, killing countless people, plus Roz.
No way would he do that.
No way at all.
Really.
Because it was really no problem.
No problem at all.
He could do it easi—
DESTROY THE PLANE.
Dammit. The voice had interrupted him. Nick hadn’t counted on that
when he’d felt supremely confident mere seconds before. That voice in his
head. He had to switch off that voice in his head or maybe the plane would
nose-dive.
‘Dr Valesco?’ said the voice of Dr Nullman in Nick’s ears.
 ‘Yes, Dr Nullman?’ replied Dr Valesco.
Nick turned his head aside to look at Nullman, who’d retreated to a safe
area some distance away.
‘Will you please press the third button.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Dr Valesco.
‘No!’ yelled Nick.
Valesco pressed the third button, and the God Socket awoke.
There was a sudden electrical whoosh as some unknown unit inside the
machine commenced ignition, followed by a whirring hum, rapidly building
in intensity like the surge and spin of an aeroplane’s engines while
accelerating along a runway.
Nick didn’t have to look upward to know that the throbbing motion of
released electrical energy was pulsing through the connecting cable towards
his brain at immense speed – much faster than before.
Then that energy exploded into him.
All at once, Nick saw stars. Planets. A whole universe. A vast cosmos
filled with insanely big Salamander-Bottomed Men, wriggling and writhing
in the abyss like massive tadpoles in a colossal universal pool. Like trillions
of gargantuan spermatozoa inside some terrifying space-borne ball sack.
And, as Nick steered his mind’s eye away from the sight, terrified almost
to the point of insanity by the awe-evoking vision, he felt the plane he was
piloting veering from its course, turning over as both engines exploded, and
he saw that all those colossal free-floating Salamander-Bottomed Men were
only babies. Small specks of cosmic dust before the looming presence of
their own terrifying God of Destruction . . .
An even bigger Salamander-Bottomed Man.
Nick screamed, attempting to wrench his own eyes from their sockets.
The head. The damned head. Even more colossal than the Salamander-
Bottomed Man’s head he’d seen earlier.
It was Nick’s own.
Again.
His own, insanely evil, super-destructive face was staring out into the
vast infinity of quaking Salamander-Bottomed Man eggs, urging, willing
their ultimate destruction.
Nullifying all before him.
Even his own Salamander-Bottomed Men brethren.
 ‘No!’ screamed Nick, his mind bursting free from his petrifying
portentum into a reality even more horrifying.
For the plane was now heading into the stretch of sky directly in front of
him.
DESTROY.
‘No!’ yelled Nick. ‘I won’t do it.’
YOU WILL. YOU WILL DESTROY THAT PLANE. YOU WILL
BRING DOWN THAT PLANE. YOU WILL CRUSH THAT PLANE.
YOU WILL ENJOY DECIMATING EVERYTHING RELATED TO THAT
PLANE.
Nick fought with his mind. Battled the Richard Burton voice in his brain.
EXPLODE THESE HEATHENS. WIPE OUT THIS LOWLY PRICKERY.
LEAVE NOTHING BEHIND BUT ASH. TURN THE WHOLE WORLD TO
STONE. WHILE REMEMBERING TO KEEP A COPY OF ALL YOUR
BOOKS SAFE IN A REINFORCED LIBRARY FOR POSTERITY.
Dammit, could it be true? Was Nick really convincing himself that a
world without Mankind was better than a world without his own books?
YES. OF COURSE.
But Roz, poor, sweet Roz. Sure, she’d been wrong about his writing
numerous times. But that was kind of cute, in a way. He enjoyed proving
her wrong and seeing her think for a moment, confused, before shrugging
her shoulders and saying, ‘Sure, Nick, whatever,’ before ringing him a week
later in floods of tears saying, ‘You were right, Nick, all along, please
forgive me. Is there anything else I can do for you? Just don’t call Clackett
and ask them to appoint my colleague Stephanie instead.’
Hell, he loved Roz, in a way. He couldn’t destroy her. He wouldn’t
destroy her.
DESTROY ROZ. SHE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT HORROR. HER
SPECIALITY BEFORE TAKING YOU ON WAS COSY MYSTERY AND
RANCH ROMANCE. TAKE THE PLANE DOWN.
Dammit, the voice was taking him over. Suppressing Nick’s nobler
instincts. Why the hell shouldn’t he take Roz down? Hadn’t she tried to
oppose him from the get-go, ordering him to use capital letters at the start of
each sentence when he’d routinely told her he wouldn’t defer to anyone or
anything on principle, not least the laws of conventional grammar. Too bad
if Roz was on an emergency flight to London, desperately concerned about
Nick’s mysterious disappearance and hoping to contact some specialist big-
league private detection agency in the Big Smoke to retrace Nick’s last
steps in an effort to find her favourite author. She’d drawn her last red line
through one of his manuscripts, that was for sure.
DOWN THAT PLANE.
He should have done this before, Nick figured. Should have exploded the
brains of those five critics, after all. Thank God Valesco had done it when
Nick himself had been too weak to act. Good Dr Valesco. Now that was a
guy who knew how to get things done. Why not make some money from
illegal medical practices conducted on the sly? Why not trade in illegal
transplants on the black market, develop unethical medicines for the
pharmaceutical industry and hide mutant offspring in an abandoned store
cupboard on Floor 13? Why *not* inject the brains of innocent patients
with small detonators so that they could become willing vegetables who
could be exploded if they got difficult?
And Nullman. That brilliantly austere, burgundy-nail-stroking, coldly
clinical medical hot dog? Hell, she wanted Nick and he wanted her, dammit.
They should throw all pretence aside and set to together on the operating
table, mid-procedure. Who cared? Why stand on ceremony when it was
barking clear that their evil, corrupt minds were made for each other?
Practically begging to join in with some unholy union of mind and body?
They should be rubbing their Nobels together (once Nick, too, had been
awarded one) – and to hell with the consequences. Screw office politics,
these two were hot for each other, dammit, and the rest of the medical
fraternity could go do one if they thought an emergency colonoscopy was
going to happen before he and Nullman were sated.
STOP ONANISING AND DOWN THAT PLANE.
Of course, thought Nick, suddenly shamefaced by this sudden castigation
from his subconscious. The plane. I must down that plane.
Nick looked out across the fields. The jet was clearly visible now, the
lights on its wings blinking as it rose upward towards a bank of low-lying
clouds.
DOWN IT, I SAID. DOWN THAT PLANE.
‘I will down that plane,’ said Nick blankly, eyes staring through the
window like an automaton.
‘It’s working,’ said Valesco, still standing beside the God Socket while he
monitored Nick’s vitals.
 ‘He’s stable,’ said Nullman from her position by the observation
monitors. She looked up from one of the screens, her hands still holding a
long ream of paper currently spooling data at speed from a nearby printer.
‘But I want to make sure everything goes right this time,’ she added. She
called out to Valesco from her side of the room: ‘Dr Valesco?’
‘Yes, Dr Nullman?’ he replied, calling back to her from his side of the
room.
‘I think it’s time to press the secret button.’
What little remained of Nick’s softer, mammalian brain awoke suddenly.
A secret button? So they’d been lying to him, then? Telling him there
were three buttons on the God Socket, when all along there was actually a
secret button in addition? Meaning four buttons in total?
Those bastards.
Valesco smiled cruelly at Nick, moving his finger along from the third
button marked ‘Even More Powerful’ to a blank space beside it. Then, with
Nick powerless to intervene, this cruelly woeful excuse for a professional
medic reached into the pocket of his lab coat and drew out a coin. He
reached down towards the blank space beside the third button and began
scratching at the steel wall of the box.
‘No . . .’ muttered Nick, unable to believe his eyes.
Valesco laughed aloud. For this particular patch of steel lining wasn’t a
patch of steel lining after all. It was a sheet of slightly strengthened tin foil.
As Nick watched in horror, Valesco rubbed the coin across the thin layer of
slightly strengthened tin foil and revealed, beneath it, the fourth button.
Then, as if to add insult to injury, Valesco scratched at the space below
the fourth button, exposing the two words printed there:

‘Insanely Powerful’

‘Oh, God, no,’ cried Nick, as Valesco reached his index finger outward
again towards this fourth, insanely powerful button, and, at a nod from
Nullman across the room, pressed it.
Nick screamed again as a bright flash of pink electrical energy soared
through the connecting pipe at the speed of lightning, igniting his insides.
His limbs thrashed, convulsing in the gurney as his entire body and brain
shone with pink fire. Then two jets of pink flame shot from Nick’s eyes,
boring effortlessly through the pane of glass, firing like bolts of lightning
across the intervening sky to strike the sky-borne plane mid-air. There was a
blinding flash from the jet’s engine, followed by a gigantic burst of flame,
as the plane suddenly rolled, banking left, then descended at speed towards
the ground.
DESTROY THAT PLANE, said the dark voice inside Nick’s head.
And finally, Nick himself agreed.
 CHAPTER TEN
‘The Nullifier’

DOWN DOWN DOWN.

‘According to its current trajectory and angle of descent, the plane should
make impact with the ground in approximately two minutes,’ said Valesco.
‘Well done, Mr Steen,’ said Nullman, walking out from behind the
protective screen and moving over to him. ‘You took less time than we’d
anticipated.’
Confident that her patient was now fully under Nulltec’s control, she
released the wheel stops on Nick’s gurney.
‘Once that jet’s completely obliterated, take him down to one of the
containment cells,’ she said to one of Valesco’s assistants.
Valesco himself, whose face was usually half-swathed in eerie shadow
but was now fully lit up by the bright jets of pink fire shooting forth from
Nick’s eyes, looked up at her questioningly.
‘How do we know we can contain him?’ he asked warily, having learned
from bitter experience not to question Nullman’s judgement without some
rigorous scientific evidence to back up his doubts.
‘Explain yourself,’ she said, turning to face him.
‘He’s received the full force of the God Socket,’ explained Valesco. ‘And
then some. We don’t yet know quite what he’ll be capable of. If I were you,
I’d reattach those wheel stops to the gurney immediately, in case it starts
rolling away of its own accord. Unless, of course, he starts to levitate. But I
very much doubt that will happen.’
Nullman lit a cigarette, drawing deeply on the long orange butt between
her lusciously coated lips. Then she reached a slender hand past Nick’s
glowing shoulder and stroked his cheek provocatively. ‘I think I’ll be able
to keep any of Mr Steen’s more errant urges fully under my control.’
‘As you wish, Nullman,’ said Valesco. ‘But we’re no longer dealing with
a conventional psychopath whose R-Complex we’re simply removing via
dangerous, experimental surgery. That machine is called the God Socket for
a reason. Inside Mr Steen’s mind now dwells the iron will and mental
powers of a cosmic deity. This being emerging before us is no longer Nick
Steen, horror author. Or even Nick Steen, doomed airline pilot. This is Nick
Steen, God of Worldly Destruction. Nick Steen, the Nullifier.’
THE NULLIFIER. YES. I AM THE NULLIFIER AND I WILL NULLIFY
ALL.
Nick had to agree with the destructive voice intoning deeply and
sombrely inside his brain. As his eyes concentrated both pink jets of searing
psychokinetic flame on the ailing plane, watching it spin and tumble over
and over as it careened ever closer to the ground, Nick had the increasingly
ominous feeling that any resistance he might have shown was useless now.
For he alone was the ultimate source of power in the cosmos, wasn’t he?
Soon he would be able to conquer Stalkford entirely, then outer Stalkford,
Britain at large, the world, the inner and outer universe, etc. He’d be
invincible.
Yeah, goodbye, Roz, laughed Nick, inwardly. And good riddance. Next
time, take your advice on narrative point of view and shove it where the sun
don’t shine. If there even is a next time. Which there isn’t.
Because Nick Steen, as Nick himself once knew him, was no more.
THAT’S RIGHT. DESTROY THE PLANE. ANNIHILATE IT. NULLIFY
THAT PLANE.
The rear of the jet was now in flames. At this rate, it might incinerate
entirely before it even hit the ground.
YES. IT MIGHT INCINERATE ENTIRELY BEFORE IT EVEN HITS THE
GROUND. THAT’S HOW POWERFUL I NOW AM.
‘Whoa there, boyo,’ said a strange voice in Nick’s ear suddenly. And at
once, a small vestige of slumbering normality awoke, deep within his brain.
For those three simple words, softly spoken, had somehow reopened a door
in Nick’s mind. A nondescript mental door in a lengthy corridor of similarly
nondescript mental doors that had previously been sealed shut by the
invasion of his new writhing R-Complex, alongside that relentless big burst
of nuclear energy coming at all times from the adjoining God Socket.
And from that quiet, darkened room behind the aforesaid nondescript
door deep inside Nick’s brain emerged two words of Nick’s own.
The Taffer.
 Of course! Nick’s dying mind thought, regaining some brief, transitory
aspect of his former self. The Taffer was here. That wise old Welchman had
come to help Nick in his hour of need again. Risked life and leek to bring
Nick Steen’s mind back from the brink. But what brink? thought Nick, his
memory clouding over again almost instantly. What was this so-called brink
that the Taffer was attempting to bring Nick’s mind back from?
‘Listen to me, boyo,’ the Taffer’s voice continued from his position
beside Nick’s ear, where he was currently feigning having lost track of his
huge leek again. ‘You stop this here Nullifying nonsense right now, look
you. That there’s one heck of a lovely plane, painted all nice and red, it is,
with lovely people on board, or so I’m told. And I do ’appen to know that
that there Roz Bloom girly friend o’ yours is on that plane too, which is
mainly white I now have to say, it being a bit closer now, with only red bits
on it, but a lovely bright red all the same, so they are. And, getting back to
the point now, she’s on her way, look you, all the way to London Town to
find out where you are, Nick Steen, so she is, look you. And I’m telling you
now, boyo, you need to seize control of that there mind o’ yours, and do
what’s right. For there’s still about ten thousand feet or so yet between that
there plane and the ground it’s heading for. And if you don’t lift that bloody
thing up sharpish, like miners dangling in a shaft above some community-
decimating gas explosion, you’ll have the Taffer ’ere to answer to, so help
me Rhiannon. And my prize leek too, look you.’
The Taffer, thought Nick. Thank the Lord, it really was the Taffer. The
sweet, fat, ridiculously hatted Taffer.
And thanks to the Taffer’s selfless actions, Nick could now recall at long
last that he had to rescue the plane. The very plane he was currently in the
process of bringing down! The plane that was already spiralling down to
earth in a terrifying death-arc brought about by Nick’s relentless psychic
eye-blasting. The plane carrying Roz Bloom towards total and complete
destruction!
DESTROY! DESTROY THE PLANE. BRING THE PLANE DOWN.
DOWN. DOWN. DOWN.
No! thought Nick. I can’t! I daren’t! I won’t!
‘The Taffer?’ whispered Nick, his emerging voice almost silent in the
Welchman’s ear. ‘The Taffer, are you there?’
‘So I am, boyo,’ said the Taffer. ‘Here to help you pull that there plane up
again, even if I have to sacrifice my own prize leek in the process. So look
you now, Nick Steen, and snap right to it, boyo . . .’
A spray of bullets smacked into the Taffer’s hat, cutting him off abruptly
amid a shower of felt scraps.
Then Nulltec’s security detail recalibrated the aim of their Nulltec-issued
Berettas and shot the Welchman’s face off completely.
As what remained of the Taffer’s body dropped to both knees, spurting
long jets of blood upward from the stump of its neck, before flopping
forward on to the floor, snapping its own giant leek in two beneath its
chunky frame, the nondescript door in Nick’s brain that had been briefly
opened by the now-dead Welchman closed again, with the harsh snap of not
a single, not a double, but a triple-activated metaphorical mind-lock.
THAT’S BETTER. NOW LET ME GET BACK TO DESTROYING. LET
ME BRING THE WHOLE EDIFICE DOWN. LIKE I SAID EARLIER.
From his position on the far side of the observation room, the youthful
blond-haired man who’d drugged Nick with tranquilliser-laced Scotch in
that car that drove him to Nulltec, and who was, besides being a part-time
chauffeur’s assistant, head of Nulltec’s Security Team, congratulated
himself on a well-aimed shot, then suddenly began to panic.
‘What the hell’s happening?’ he yelled, as Nick’s body began to float
upward from the gurney, levitating in mid-air. Whatever insane force or
power was in the process of overtaking Nick Steen’s mind, it evidently now
possessed the ability to float him upwards against all known laws of gravity.
Not to mention those two pink jets of flame he was still projecting from
both eyes.
‘Doctor Valesco?’ the blond-haired man yelled across the room, seeking
cover behind a row of computer monitors as the dials and buttons on the
God Socket beside Nick began to smoke, crackle and whizz about in circles
like a sputtering Catherine wheel.
The assembled doctors watched in horror as Nick’s body continued to
ascend towards the ceiling, trailing the vast pipe connecting his head to the
God Socket behind.
‘I warned you, Nullman,’ said Valesco. ‘This being is becoming more
powerful than anything we can imagine. I sense it’s soon going to be a right
pig’s arse to control.’
‘Leave Steen as he is,’ said Nullman, scanning frantically through a fresh
ream of paper now spooling from her nearby computer console. ‘We are
getting exceptional results from these readouts. Why, with this level of
attainable power generated by the God Socket, the Nullifier will be simply
unstoppable. Surely I don’t have to explain to you what that means,
doctor?’
‘Lucrative contracts with the world’s most powerful military
organisations?’ replied Valesco, playing along for now. ‘Meaning Nulltec
will soon be able to auction out contracts for its top-secret research projects
to the highest bidder?’
‘Exactly,’ confirmed Nullman. ‘And then we’ll be able to create our own
wars to feed further research. We’re in the money, Valesco.’ Nullman
laughed, rubbing her hands with glee. ‘We’ll be able to build that heated
swimming pool.’
That heated swimming pool, hissed Valesco inwardly. Always with the
damned heated swimming pool. As if any of them ever had time to go
swimming with all the work they had to do on their sinister top-secret
projects. This wasn’t about that damned heated swimming pool – and
Nullman knew it.
‘This isn’t about that damned heated swimming pool – and you know it,
Nullman. Speaking frankly, I’m not sure I trust your motives anymore. If I
didn’t know better, I’d say you were concealing some sort of nefarious
purpose or scheme of your own, as yet unknown to others in your employ,’
Valesco sneered. ‘I can’t help thinking you’re keeping something from me.’
‘Likewise, Doctor Valesco,’ said Nullman, piercing him with her own
accusatory glare. ‘Likewise, I can’t help but think that you’re keeping
something from me.’
Valesco held Nullman’s gaze for a moment more (and vice versa), then
both doctors turned their heads suddenly at the horrendous screaming of
incoming jet engines.
In front of Nick’s floating body, the plane was now clearly visible
through the observation window, emerging nose first through a bank of
cloud like a dart heading at speed directly towards a horizontal dartboard
(i.e. one that’s lying down on the ground, rather than hanging from the wall
of a pub).
HERE IT COMES, said the voice like Richard Burton or Robert Powell’s
inside Nick’s head. THE MOMENT OF TRUTH. THE POINT OF IMPACT.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE INNOCENTS. THE CULLING OF THE
LAMBS. THE DROWNING OF THE KITTENS. THE PLUNGING OF THE
LEMMINGS. THE TOSSING OUT OF THE FLEDGLINGS. ALL MUST
DIE BEFORE THE EYE OF MEDUSA. ALL MUST PERISH IN FLAME
BEFORE THE GLARE OF THE GUYGON. FOR I AM ALPHA AND
OMEGA, PLUS ALL THE OTHER LETTERS IN BETWEEN. I AM THE
ANGEL OF DOOM. THE GOD OF DESTRUCTION. I AM THE ALL-
POWERFUL NULLIFIER. AND I DO MEAN ALL-POWERFUL, BELIEVE
ME. FINE. JUST TRY ME AND FIND OUT.
No! screamed that quiet, strangled voice behind the metaphorical
nondescript door in that long corridor of metaphorical nondescript doors
inside Nick’s brain, as his last attempt to battle the R-Complex – that deep-
rooted reptilian instinct also known as the basal ganglia or basal nuclei,
containing the brain stem, limbic region and the amygdala – nesting in his
mind fell on deaf ears (his own).
Nick’s eyes blazed through the window as the rest of Roz’s jet shot
suddenly through the low bank of cloud, heading directly towards the green
fields immediately below. Green fields that would soon be stained red with
blood – and orange flame and blackened ash and bits of smoke as well.
And there was nothing Nick Steen could do to stop it now. Nothing at all.
Then came the explosion . . .
 CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Psych Night’

. . . as the door of the elevator blew inward.

Propelled by a powerful eruption of barrelling pink flame, the metal
frame catapulted across the observation room, embedding itself in the wall
opposite as Nulltec’s two incarcerated psychic young persons strode in.
Persephone, her eyes glowing a darker, more enraged shade of pink than
Nick’s own, advanced into the room, Christabel directly behind her.
Of course! Nick would have thought, if his consciousness hadn’t been
trapped at this particular moment deep inside the metaphorical corridors of
his own mind. The Taffer hadn’t taken Nick down to that basement to show
him those two incarcerated kids. He’d taken Nick down there so that those
two incarcerated kids could see Nick . . .
And now they were both here, to save him.
‘We’re here to save you, Nick!’ Christabel yelled up at him. ‘Quickly,
Persephone!’ The young child pointed towards the observation window,
where she had just caught sight of the impending airborne disaster about to
take place in the fields beyond.
The baggy-trousered teen with an hitherto-suspected attitude problem
from hell turned her head towards the window and fired twin jets of flame
in the direction of the ailing jet.
A pane on the window melted beneath the intense heat of Persephone’s
glare as the twin barrels of projected flame shot forth from her eyes and
struck the stricken airliner. But instead of joining with Nick’s own in a
concerted effort to down the plane, they instead appeared to wrap
themselves around its descending fuselage, which immediately began to
twist and bend like a tin can crushed inside a gigantic human fist. But there
was little malice in the action, for this was a desperate measure to reverse
the plane’s trajectory. A last-ditch attempt to turn the jumbo from its flight
path to destruction and send it back up into the clouds again. As the plane’s
nose half wrenched round 180 degrees like the head of a metal owl’s, the
plane’s rear half followed, ascending miraculously once again towards the
sun-reddened clouds above.
‘Well done, Persephone!’ squealed Christabel. ‘That worked a treat!’
NOOOO!!! yelled the voice of the Nullifier, raging inside Nick’s mind.
THIS CANNOT BE. I WAS ABOUT TO WREAK ULTIMATE HAVOC ON
THAT VERY PLANE. I WAS THAT CLOSE TO CAUSING ITS TOTAL,
ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION – AND THEN YOU TWO CAME ALONG.
HOW DARE YOU TWO.
‘Nick’s head, Persephone!’ yelled Christabel again. ‘Now that you’ve
sent that plane on a safe course back upward, into the sky, concentrate your
unique psychic powers on Nick’s head instead. For I sense from my
burgeoning extra telepathic ability to read minds, which I recently
discovered since speaking to Nick last, and which now exists in me in
addition to my already established psychic ability to heal and resurrect dead
or dying matter, that Nick’s mind has been taken over by an evil cosmic
deity known as the Nullifier. My guess is that if we’re to have any hope of
securing a happy ending to this tale, to use a writer’s analogy that’s
particularly apt when talking about Nick, given that he’s a writer himself,
we need to stop the Nullifier from taking over Nick’s mind. I suggest you
try and twist those jets of flame coming from his eyes round 180 degrees,
exactly like you did with that plane just now, and project them rearward into
his own eyes. That way, we might just zap a few evil brain cells and give
the real Nick a fighting chance.’
With that, Christabel turned her own head from Nick’s, her eyes
immediately alighting upon the headless body of the Taffer lying directly
below him. Glowing now with a genuine ethereal rose-tinted light, the
young girl floated forward, discovering at that moment an additional power
of spiritual levitation, so deep were her feelings now of empathy and pity
for this blasted Welchman. Holding her sacred palms up against the Taffer’s
stump, she whispered into the hole in his neck. Then, as if by some divine
miracle, the splintered fragments of his obliterated skull and brain clumps
rose, along with the pool of blood leaking from the Taffer’s neck, and
reassembled themselves into the shape of his former head.
As Christabel muttered ‘Amen’ at last, the Taffer’s eyes snapped open.
Blinking wildly, he looked down frantically at his broken prize leek.
Which was now also miraculously intact.
 ‘Thank you kindly, young cariad,’ said the Taffer, staggering to his feet
and plucking the string of plastic peepers from around his head. For there
was no need to hide his eyesight anymore. Now, if anything, he needed that
sight.
‘Thank goodness I, the Taffer, was able to wheel Nick down to you two
in that there basement under the pretence of being completely blind so that
he could alert you both to the sinister machinations of this shadowy
establishment.’
‘Thanks, the Taffer,’ said Christabel. ‘For if you hadn’t sent Nick into our
cell so that he could scream, “You’re all incarcerats,” at us until he was blue
in the face, we might never have known that he, and we, were in fact
prisoners here. And when Scorcher bit me accidentally while I was feeding
him dog biscuits and cocked his leg up against my bed to piddle, I knew
something deeply sinister was going on. Because if Scorcher wasn’t really
the loveliest dog in all the whole wide world, then maybe Nulltec wasn’t the
loveliest nursery in the whole wide world, either. That’s when we both
decided to have a look around and heard all the shouting coming from this
floor. We decided to investigate, and the rest is history.’
‘Except it’s not history yet, young lassie,’ said the Taffer, as his face grew
suddenly grave. ‘Look you out, you!’ he bellowed, suddenly.
Christabel turned her head to see a titanic ball of pink flame burst
through the observation window, seemingly held in mid-air by two battling
jets of flame. Then she saw that Persephone was fighting with the Nullifier
currently squatting inside Nick’s head, both sets of eyes flaming outward
towards each other’s retinas in an effort to overcome the other’s opposing
blast.
‘I can’t beat it,’ said Persephone. ‘The pink psychic flames coming from
Nick’s head are too strong!’
‘Nick!’ yelled the Taffer, shouting up towards the still-floating Nick,
realising he had to break through to him again, somehow. ‘If you’re in
there, boyo, this little lady out here needs your help, look you. Come out of
that there locked door in your mind and give her a blast of some good old
Nick Steen magic!’
Deep inside Nick’s mind, that nondescript door of metaphor once more
creaked open. Perhaps only a couple of inches ajar, but enough to be
technically open. And soon after, Nick’s face, embattled and over-
empowered as it was, slowly and hesitantly peeked out.
 ‘Look you!’ sounded a voice from far off, coming from somewhere along
that long and distant metaphorical corridor of nondescript metaphorical
doors.
The Taffer, thought Nick again, weakly. The Taffer.
The Taffer!
‘He’s coming round!’ yelled the Taffer, as Persephone concentrated the
full force of her powers on twisting the two jets of Nick’s projected eye-
flame around, aiming them, backward again, in the direction of Nick’s own
skull.
‘That’s it!’ howled the Taffer, gleefully. ‘You’re doing it alright, lassie.
Look you, you’re doing it!’
Then the Taffer’s head exploded again.
‘Good shot!’ yelled Nullman, who, along with Valesco and the various
insignificant medical orderlies who’d previously been milling about, had
now recovered sufficiently from the sudden bursting-in of the elevator door
and, having assessed the unfolding situation technically for a few minutes,
so that any potential hasty mistakes could be ironed out well in advance,
had ordered the security detail to fight back with a vengeance.
The blond-haired gunman re-aimed his Beretta in the direction of
Persephone . . .
. . . as Christabel once again reached out with her hands and healed the
Taffer’s head.
‘What the . . .?’ said the blond gunman, his eyes scarcely believing what
they were now seeing.
‘Thanking you again, young lady,’ said the Taffer, dusting himself down.
‘Now what say you we blow this thing and go home?’
His head exploded again.
‘Good shot again,’ yelled Nullman. ‘It’s that bloody girl doing it,’ she
hissed, pointing at Christabel. ‘She’s healing him every time. Kill her! Kill
the girl! Kill the healer!’
The blond-haired gunman, now joined by his balding, sideburn-sporting
companion – the driver of the car that had brought Nick to Nulltec – aimed
their Berettas at Christabel’s head instead . . .
. . . just as Nick metaphorically stepped fully out of the nondescript
metaphorical door of his mind into the metaphorical corridor of nondescript
doors leading off into an impenetrable metaphorical distance.
 What the hell’s happening? he asked himself. Hadn’t he just heard the
Taffer’s voice from somewhere afar, calling him? Yet now it had just as
suddenly been silenced again. It was high time he investigated what exactly
was going on here.
Nick looked ahead, into the darkness of the distant corridor, then saw
something snaking towards him from the far distance. Out of the shadows,
it approached him slowly, coiling itself over the floor, assisted by the
sinister padding of reptilian feet. The feet, Nick saw as the light finally
exposed a rash of yellow spotting against its viscous, blackened skin, of a
salamander . . .
Nick stopped dead in his tracks (he’d walked forward a couple of steps
beyond his nondescript metaphorical door, but not much further).
Then gulped. The legs of a salamander. Or was it more like a snake’s
tail? What was this monstrosity sliding on its spotted, mucoid belly towards
him? Nick suddenly detected the outline of an unusual-looking head set
upon the top of its swollen body as it continued to pass the nondescript
metaphorical doors of that long, unending metaphorical corridor inside
Nick’s mind. It was a human head.
Nick’s own.
Was this, then, the dreaded R-Complex itself? Embedding its physical
shape inside Nick’s own psyche in the form of his own head? Was this the
reptilian instinct now threatening his life, and that of all Mankind?
The head emerged fully from the shadows, and Nick knew then what it
really was.
The Nullifier.
I AM THE NULLIFIER, it said. AND I AM HERE TO NULLIFY YOU
FIRST, NICK STEEN, AS A MATTER OF PRIORITY. AND THEN I WILL
NULLIFY EVERYONE ELSE.
No, thought Nick. I have to get out of here. I have to save the Taffer, if
he’s still alive.FN29 I have to help whoever is out there trying to help me. I
can sense goodness out there. The souls of innocents screaming out at me,
Nick Steen, to come and save them.
TOO LATE, said the Nullifier. YOU’RE TRAPPED IN HERE WITH ME,
IN THIS NONDESCRIPT CORRIDOR OF YOUR OWN MIND.
‘You missed out one word, friend,’ said Nick to the approaching monster.
WHAT WORD? the Nullifier replied. WHAT WORD DID I MISS OUT?
Nick smiled, grimly. ‘Metaphorical.’
 METAPHORICAL WHAT? I DON’T UNDERSTAND.
‘Nondescript metaphorical corridor. Meaning a corridor that is not literal,
and therefore one I can leave at any point of my own accord.’
OH, RIGHT. NOW I UNDERSTAND.
And with that, Nick opened his eyes and left that metaphorical corridor,
returning once again to the land of the living . . .

. . . where all hell was breaking loose!

‘Watch out!’ Nick yelled as his head, finally weakening under the sheer
force of Persephone’s twisting eye-flame, turned round 180 degrees. From
this position he was able to glimpse the immediate threat of Nullman’s
security goons as they levelled their weapons at the young girl far below his
levitating form.
Immediately, he glared in the direction of the assembled medical
fraternity and blasted his own psychic eye-fire towards the quaking doctors.
Instantly, an entire row of insignificant orderlies erupted in a ball of flame.
But that wasn’t enough for Nick.
Furious now, drawing strength and courage from his sudden triumph, and
fuelled by the knowledge that he had single-handedly saved Christabel’s
life, admittedly with some minor assistance from Persephone, Nick began
projecting yet more psychic fire blasts at the assembled scientists.
Three more groups of insignificant orderlies erupted into flames as Nick
burned past them, scorching an entire row of computer monitors erected
against the far wall.
‘My computers!’ screamed Nullman. ‘He’s scorching my computers!’
‘And that’s not all, Nullman,’ yelled Nick at her, his voice suddenly more
Burton-Powellesque in tone and depth than even the dreaded Nullifier
himself. ‘Now you will rue the day you incarcerated Nick Steen,’ he howled
from his position near the ceiling, pink flame breathing down the necks of
the assembled doctors as he ignited several more. His vengeful eyes
exploded yet another bank of monitors and computer terminals as his killing
gaze swept slowly but surely from right to left.
All at once, the entire observation room was a sparking, fizzing mass of
exploding technical equipment and melting machinery.
 Then, using the force of his own projected psychic powers combined
with those of Persephone, Nick directed the four pink lasers shooting from
their collective eyes towards the smoking black box in the middle of the
floor below.
Towards the God Socket itself . . .
‘Destroy the black box,’ yelled Nick at Persephone, his voice echoing
around the room loudly, as if he was speaking to them through a portable
speaker at some garden fete, only far more frightening. ‘Destroy the God
Socket. It’s our only chance to rid this world of that all-powerful Nullifier
now steeling himself within me for a comeback!’
As Nick and Persephone concentrated their powers on the God Socket
below them, attempting to burn a hole through its tin lid, a lab-coated figure
sprung from his hiding place beneath Nick’s abandoned gurney and leaped
over towards the blackened crate.
‘No!’ cried Valesco, throwing his arms around the smoking, blackened
contraption and whisking it away from Nick’s angle of fire. ‘The God
Socket is mine, I tell you! Mine!’
‘Like hell it is,’ yelled Nullman, emerging from her own hiding place
beneath an ever-spooling ream of printer paper. She pointed her burgundy-
nailed index finger in the doctor’s direction. ‘Remember, Valesco. You are
only Assistant Chief Head of the Nulltec Corporation. I am Chief Head.
That’s my God Socket, not yours. It’s my name on that Nobel Prize,
remember?’
‘And who developed the technology allowing you to win that Nobel
Prize?’ sneered Valesco, still waving the God Socket around in his arms in
an effort to evade the four jets of wandering pink flame coming from Nick’s
and Persephone’s lasering eyes as they struggled to get it back in their
sights. ‘Who enabled you to identify, isolate and remove that piece of R-
Complex in the first place?’ Valesco was angry now, the speed at which he
was whipping the crate around in concentric circles in an effort to avoid it
being flamed from sideways and above increasing with each orbit. ‘Who
designed this entire God Socket? Muggins here, that’s who. Granted,
Nullman, your achievements in the field of medicine earned you enough
government research grants to fund development of this device at
supersonic speed, but it was I alone who designed its mechanics. It was I
who slaved away, night and day, but mainly day, working alone in my
laboratory, with only an occasional break for coffee, lunch, dinner and some
legally entitled downtime. I alone who knew that to power the God Socket,
we would need to feed it brain molecules from a trillion anatomically varied
healthy human subjects. I alone was the one, Nullman, who personally
referred perfectly healthy people to a temporary fake hospital address here
at Nulltec in order to induce sudden unnecessary comas in the operating
theatre, allowing us to siphon off their precious cranial particulars
unawares, so that we could then use the gathered juice to create a biological
serum that would breathe life back into that piece of frozen, inanimate
organic matter we’d had stolen by a secret government agency right under
the Vatican’s nose: a twelfth-century Holy Roman relic purporting to be the
supposed long-lost finger bone of God, but which in actual fact turned out
to be the genuine long-lost finger bone of God.
‘It was I alone who connected that long-lost finger bone of God up to a
rudimentary circuit board and got that God Socket working; I who went out
for replacement batteries in the middle of the night, frequently paying for
them out of my own pocket; I who polished those steel plates to make it
look all nice, and made sure all the buttons were of uniform size and design
when initially we could only find two that looked the same. It was I who
personally laid that foil covering concealing the top-secret fourth button,
which admittedly is not completely identical to the others, but then the
chances of sourcing more than three buttons of identical design is really
pushing the odds, quite frankly – and this is the thanks I get?’
Suddenly, a huge bang sounded from the God Socket in Valesco’s hands,
which had now turned completely black.
‘What the blazes?’ shouted Valesco. ‘I’m pretty certain I was swinging
this God Socket around fast enough to scupper Nick and Persephone’s aim,
so what the hell’s going wrong with it now?’
‘It seems to be channelling its power from some other source,’ said
Nullman. ‘Maybe through that cable sticking out of the top of Nick Steen’s
head. Do something, Valesco, while my security detail holds them off.’
As the pair of Beretta-wielding security guards and part-time chauffeur
and part-time assistant chauffeur fired off several rounds into the air,
forcing Persephone and Nick to duck and dive among the ricocheting
bullets, Valesco pulled out a dusty clipboard with his spare hand and
searched frantically through his research notes.
‘If I don’t know better,’ said Valesco, after several quick mathematical
calculations, ‘I’d say the God Socket was now channelling extra power
from the bowels of Hell.’
‘Good God!’ cried Nullman. ‘Then that long-lost finger bone of God you
used to activate the serum . . .’
‘Yes?’ said Valesco, yanking the blackened God Socket away from a
fresh sweep of Nick’s psychic eye-blasting. ‘What about it?’
‘Could it have been mislabelled at the monastery?’
‘What are you implying, Nullman?’
‘I’m not implying anything. I’m telling you that instead of that being the
long-lost finger bone of God, Valesco, we may have inadvertently created
the God Socket using a different long-lost finger bone? The long-lost finger
bone of . . . the Devil!’
‘No,’ said Valesco. ‘I think it’s more likely to be the particular brand of
batteries I’m using. I must admit, having spent so much of my own money
on replacing them, I was starting to obtain cheap multipacks from that guy
who works in the unmarked van behind Spar.’
‘But those are Spar-sold batteries?’ asked Nullman, her face deadly
serious now.
‘No, Nullman. The Spar-sold batteries were at least a pound more,
whereas this guy had his own packs round the back which he was selling in
bulk from the van at half the price.’
‘You damned fool, Valesco,’ said Nullman, even if inside she was
breathing a quiet sigh of relief. At least they wouldn’t have to worry about
contending with the long-lost finger bone of the Devil now, alongside
everything else they had to deal with.
THAT’S WHERE YOU’RE ALL WRONG. BECAUSE I TURNED THE
GOD SOCKET BLACK MYSELF BY FORCING MYSELF BACK UP THAT
TUBE STICKING OUT OF NICK STEEN’S HEAD IN ORDER TO HIDE
FOR A WHILE INSIDE THE BOX ITSELF, THUS TURNING IT BLACK.
I’VE BEEN BIDING MY TIME IN HERE, BUILDING UP MY STRENGTH
AGAIN FOR THE FINAL ONSLAUGHT. WAITING FOR NICK STEEN TO
DEPLETE HIS OWN STRENGTH WHILE DODGING BULLET FIRE
FROM THOSE TWO WEIRD CHAUFFEURS YOU EMPLOY. NOW I’M
ALL SET TO GO BACK DOWN AND . . .
The Nullifier got no further. With a death-defying scream, Nick reached
up with his own hands and yanked violently at the cable protruding from his
own head.
NO!
 ‘Quick, Persephone!’ yelled Nick. ‘I need your help pulling this out
before the Nullifier shimmies back up that connecting pipe into my head
again. I need you to twist the pipe round so that it pumps out in the opposite
direction, i.e., Out of my head!’
‘No,’ said Persephone, scowling and looking down at her shoes again.
Nick couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘Come on, Persephone. This is neither the
time nor the place to go into another massive sulk with me. It’s time you
grew up and took on some responsibility for yourself and others.’
‘Don’t want to,’ said Persephone, sniffing.
THAT’S RIGHT, PERSEPHONE, said the Nullifier, already halfway up
the connecting pipe again. DO WHAT YOU WANT. HE EFFECTIVELY
CALLED YOU A WASTE OF SPACE. HE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND YOU,
PERSEPHONE. JUST GIVE HIM THE FINGER AND TELL HIM TO GO
SHOVE IT.
‘Be reasonable, Persephone,’ cautioned Nick from his position in the
corner of the ceiling. A position he might well be forced to abandon in a
matter of nano-seconds. ‘Sure, you’re mad at me. Hell, my own daughter
was mad at me.FN30 I’ve been there. I understand. I know the score,
Persephone. I know what it’s like to have a big, ugly mouth-brace that
collects food. To work up a sweat in baggy trousers that you don’t wash and
so start to smell, causing unsolicited comments from your family and
friends and isolating you even further from your peers. All this, when the
trousers in question don’t even conceal the weight you wish to hide, but in
fact simply exaggerate it. I know how much that hurts. Hell, my daughter
was in tears daily whenever I pointed it out. But if you don’t shape up and
ship out this instant, young lady, you’ll be sulking alone for another reason
entirely. You’ll be sulking alone because there’ll be literally no one on earth
left alive to sulk around, least of all you, princess!’
Nick couldn’t have got her moving any faster if he’d set a tube of
firecrackers going under her feet. Persephone must have lost at least five
pounds in that one leap alone, as she jumped up from her sulking position
and directed fire from her eyes towards the top of Nick’s cranial head
support.
Nick would be sure to remind Persephone about how much weight she’d
lost in that simple action (and crucially, how much more she still needed to
lose) afterwards, but for now, thankfully, he and she were a team again.
 And in the nick of time, Nick reflected, as Persephone’s mental force
wrenched the pipework out from Nick’s head, twisting it back round just at
the moment that the Nullifier’s energy was about to surge back into his
brain.
Instead, the black-and-yellow-spotted R-Complex that had previously
squirmed itself inside Nick’s brain shot forth from the loose end of the
connecting cable at speed, flying out and exploding against the glass of the
observation window, before plopping to the floor in a quivering, jellied
mess.
‘You’re beaten, Nullman,’ Nick said, still floating up by the ceiling.
‘Now you have to contend with the power of Nick Steen’s mind alone. Your
R-Complex is dead. Now I am the master.’
‘Nick?’ said a small voice from below. He looked down at the small girl
creeping out of her hiding place behind the smoking God Socket. It was
Christabel, and the expression on her face was no longer quite so joyous as
before.
‘Apologies, Christabel,’ said Nick, suddenly aware that his own words
had themselves carried a certain questionable air of egotistical superiority.
‘I’ll try to balance my newfound powers with a degree of moral
responsibility.’
‘It’s not that, Nick,’ said Christabel, rocking gently back and forth as if
suddenly agitated. ‘It’s the plane. The one we stopped from crashing into
the ground. It’s back.’ She pointed upward through the observation window.
‘And it’s plummeting towards the ground again.’
 CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Phase IV’

‘Damn it!’ Nick cried, floating down from the corner of the ceiling to stand
before the window. ‘It must have suffered one final blast of Nullifying
psychic energy when that R-Complex exploded against the window, forcing
it down again into a terrifying descent. Persephone, we need to stop that
plane once again from crashing into the ground. Ideally via another burst of
twisting, so that we can send it skywards again.’
‘Unfortunately, my powers are depleted, Nick,’ said Persephone,
accidentally spitting out bits of food from between her clustered brace as
she spoke – something that was guaranteed to put off any potential new
boyfriends instantly, Nick reflected. ‘I think I only have enough psychic
power left to keep that thing suspended in the air for a few minutes or so,’
Persephone continued. ‘Unfortunately, I haven’t been eating sensibly, and
have mainly been gorging on family-sized bags of crisps and toffee
popcorn.’
‘Well, let that be a lesson to you,’ snapped Nick. ‘So we have no choice.
You’ll have to keep that plane hovering in the air while I figure out a safe
way to get it down again.’ He tutted inwardly. A safe way? Had Nick Steen
ever found a safe way to bring a plane down? Hell, he’d single-handedly
crashed well over a hundred of them during the last few months, hadn’t he?
Despite all that had happened to him, he had to remember that he was still
inhabiting his horror novel The Portentor, meaning that any plane he
attempted to bring down, no matter how far removed he might be from the
flying seat, was destined to end, like all the others, in a colossal smoking
fireball. And he didn’t want Roz’s life to end in a colossal smoking fireball,
no matter how wrong she’d consistently been about his fiction.
He’d have to figure some other way of getting the plane down. What if
he called Julia at Stalkford Airport and got her to ferry over a whole heap of
bouncy castles from the local fairground to cushion the plane’s fall? Or at
least get the emergency crews over there in advance so they could start
prepping before the plane hit the ground. But he couldn’t do either of those
things, he realised. Because he’d forgotten Julia’s surname again, and he
knew there were several Julias who worked at the airport, so it would no
doubt be a complete nightmare, and Nick would probably end up having to
go down there in person.
‘I’ve done it, Nick!’ cried Persephone. Nick looked over and saw that
she’d successfully suspended the stricken jet in mid-air, as promised. A
circular pink glow engulfed the jet now, keeping it gently afloat in mid-
spiral.
‘Good girl,’ said Nick, smiling at Persephone for the first time.
Before she could smile back, her head exploded.
‘Persephone!’ yelled Nick, as several more bullets pounded into the
teen’s baggy jeans, hammering them outward like flapping gingham
curtains in a Kansas twister.
‘Now the other one,’ yelled Valesco, directing the gunmen’s aims
towards the cowering Christabel. ‘Before she has a chance to heal her!’
Nick glanced briefly at the plane, now descending once more at speed
towards the earth below.
Christabel! Nick thought suddenly, amazed that he hadn’t figured out the
solution before now. It had to be Christabel! If the plane crashed, she could
simply heal all the passengers again, including Roz. Christabel was the key.
He had to save Christabel.
As he turned to protect her at all costs, Christabel’s head exploded.
‘Nooo!’ Nick screamed, realising the precious time he’d spent weighing
up the pros and cons of keeping Roz’s plane afloat would now be the cause
of the worst calamity Nick Steen had ever been responsible for.
Now both psychic girls were dead, Roz was involved in an ongoing death
spiral towards earth that he no longer had the remotest chance of
preventing, and he was suddenly caught in a terrifying face-off with a team
of untrustworthy medical practitioners and scientists who were wielding
guns and no doubt already discussing how they were going to repair the
dreaded God Socket and continue their unholy crusade of psychic worldly
destruction.
Then it hit Nick, like a bolt from heaven. At first he saw the distant pink
glow coming from the far horizon, and then he saw them. Two ethereal
figures, their heads aglow, heavenly flame rising from their shoulders like
the wings of genuine angels.
Because they were genuine angels.
It was Christabel, Nick realised. In spirit form. And the other one.
‘I give my powers to you now, Nick,’ sang Christabel, her voice ringing
inside his head as though coming from some far-off distant isle. ‘We will
meet again one day.’
‘See ya,’ said Persephone, not quite so sweetly.
And then, as the vision faded, Nick realised he had it now: the power to
heal. The power to reverse death itself.
Nick Steen was now, truly, a God among men.
He reached out with both hands, prepared to bring Christabel – and then
Persephone, if she behaved herself – back to life . . .
But as he did so, Barbara Nullman, who’d been crawling up unawares on
Nick all this time, inhaled deeply on a fresh cigarette, smoothed a slender
hand through her golden hair and freed the small clip behind her head
holding it back from her forehead. She let her richly flowing mane of darkly
golden locks tumble forward. Nick watched them bounce downward over
her blouse, ricocheting off the female doctor’s tautly smooth breasts.
‘Get back in your bed,’ Nullman said, slamming Nick backwards with
both hands on to his gurney. Then she leaped on top of him, pinning him to
the trolley. He could do nothing, wanted to do nothing as she slid herself
forward on to his lap. ‘You’re my patient, Nick Steen. And whether or not
you are a cosmic deity, you will lie, quaking, in the palm of my hand.
Urging me, begging me to grant you pleasure. Pleasure that I alone have the
power to grant or deny. Yes, the most powerful being in the universe will
pant like a lowly dog at my burgundy-red high heels.’
Nick couldn’t believe he’d been suckered in by the oldest trick in the
book. He should have known Nullman would ultimately utilise those
feminine charms of hers and cut him down to size at the worst possible
moment. She was Cleopatra to his Alfred the Great, the face that launched a
thousand longboats, and Nick knew that this battle, at long last, was over.
For die he now must, in the arms – and legs, ideally – of the sexiest female
canine he’d ever encountered in a sterile medical environment.
‘Take me then, Nullman,’ he said, sweating bulbously now like a frog in
heat. ‘I don’t care what you do to this crazy world falling to ruin around us,
as long as you do it to me first, okay?’
 ‘Immediately,’ said Nullman, untying Nick’s operation gown from
behind and sliding it sensually downward, over Nick’s gut.
She pulled out something provocatively shaped, winking lustfully at
Nick.
‘Let’s see what we can do with this thing, shall we?’
Nick gasped in ecstasy. Then frowned.
It was the Taffer’s leek.
All at once, Nick’s memory of the honourable Welchman broke the spell.
He reached out with one hand to the Taffer’s headless body beside him and
immediately healed him.
‘Ta for that, boyo,’ yelled the Taffer. Then he caught sight of Nullman’s
hands clasped around his prize vegetable. ‘How dare you, you brazen
missy,’ the Taffer cried, flying at Nullman, his face a mask of outraged fury.
‘My prize leek and all. That’s a barrel of bad ones, that is, young lady.’
His face blushing red with rage, the Taffer snatched his prize leek from
Nullman’s hands and bonked it across her head. Temporarily losing
consciousness, the esteemed neuroscientist dropped from Nick’s lap,
slumping on to the floor. Nick pressed down vainly on his shame, realising
that precious seconds were being lost as he fought to deflate the unwanted
rigidity of his shaft. When it had finally shrunk to its usual level of
stubbage, Nick rolled from the gurney, taking care to avoid the side where
Nullman lay in case she should wake suddenly and reach out again to draw
him downward on to the floor for another round, then raced back over to the
observation window, intent upon resurrecting Christabel and Persephone in
time to reverse the trajectory of the plummeting plane.
‘Look you!’ screamed the Taffer as the security guards leaped once more
into view, having also concealed themselves behind the still-smoking God
Socket, opening fire with both Berettas. Before Nick had a chance to evade
their shots, the Taffer hurled himself into the path of the flying bullets,
spattering his innards widely across the observation window.
Hell, Nick would heal him again in a minute. Turning swiftly towards his
foe, Nick scowled angrily, projecting two jets of molten pink fire in the
direction of this pair of would-be scientific assassins.
The jets passed through the eyeballs of the blond-haired youth, piercing
the back of his head, before soaring onward into the eyes of his balding
companion. The heads of both men frazzled, melting in the jets’ stream like
human lollies. But Nick had no time to savour his victory. Right now, he
couldn’t afford to lose a further second, aware that throughout this entire
protracted climactic denouement (were one to use the analogy of a story,
say, to describe this ongoing dramatic chain of events), Roz’s plane was still
plummeting violently, tragically, irrevocably towards the ground.
He turned back to the observation window. There was the jet, bursting
through that bank of low-lying cloud again. The jumbo carrying Roz Bloom
to her doom – unless Nick could stop it in its tracks, change its trajectory
somehow. But first he had to resurrect Christabel and Persephone, he
remembered. He just about had time, he figured, if nothing else got in his
way.
As he turned his head to Persephone’s body and prepared to lay his newly
developed healing hands about a foot away from her exploded head (he
resolutely refused to go anywhere closer), a snarl sounded from the
smoking, doorless elevator shaft.
Nick looked up in sudden panic as Scorcher, the golden retriever with
pink jets of flame coming out of its eyes, leaped into the observation deck
and bounded towards him, bearing its fangs in a disarmingly friendly – yet
deadly – smile.
‘Sit!’ bellowed Nick, but the dog was having none of it. With a terrifying
yelp, the retriever leaped up at Nick’s chest, pretending to lick his face but
in reality getting close enough to fire two jets of psychic energy deep into
Nick’s eyes, like he’d just done himself to the two security chauffeurs.
‘Not so fast,’ cried Nick, hurling the dog aside with a swipe of mental
will. His powers were now developing at a rapid pace, Nick realised.
Clearly his brief dalliance with the Nullifier had released pent-up energies
inside his own psyche, teaching it advances in psychic knowledge that
might have taken Mankind centuries, maybe even millennia, to develop.
The dog flew across the room, colliding into a wall of as-yet undamaged
computer terminals, damaging them – and it – seriously. Some got dented,
others merely scratched. But all were sufficiently damaged enough to have
invalidated the warranty.
The dog’s body sprang back from the wall, landing on all fours.
Immediately, it projected two more bolts of psychic fire at Nick’s head,
searing the remaining cables protruding from his pate as he ducked to avoid
the spouting flames.
‘Impressive,’ said Nick. ‘For a golden retriever. I hear you’re one of the
least intelligent breeds of canine.’
 That rattled the mutt. With a manic bout of barking, Scorcher leaped
forwards again, aiming its opened jaws once more at Nick’s throat. Then it
feigned, swinging its paws at him instead like human fists.
Nick blocked both blows with his forearm, spun left and threw a right
hook at the dog’s skull. The blow landed hard, then Nick followed it up
with a powerful uppercut, sending the dog upward into the air.
Nick used his mind then, flinging the animal sideways with a lightning-
fast nod, catapulting the retriever straight through the observation window
and out into the night.
As the glass pane flew outward with it, Nick was shocked to see the
dog’s trajectory suddenly slow, as it, and the glass shards surrounding it,
appeared to stop, then reverse towards Nick, back through the window
again. As the various window fragments reassembled themselves into place
behind it, the dog landed again on all fours, having successfully reversed
itself with what Nick suspected was some new psychic trick Valesco and his
scientific assistants had taught it.
Nick froze.
Valesco. Valesco was still alive, wasn’t he? Though the Taffer had seen to
Nullman, and Nick himself to the security chauffeurs, no one had yet dealt
with the sinister Dr Valesco.
‘That’s right,’ said a voice behind Nick. He turned to see the good doctor
astride the smoking God Socket, its connecting cable now attached to his
own head. He was laughing maniacally. ‘It feels good, to be a God . . .’
The doctor aimed his eyes at Nick, and they began to glow scarlet red
(not pink anymore, as Valesco had just pressed an additional concealed
button on the other side of the God Socket, marked ‘Most Powerful of All’).
Nick sensed Scorcher running towards him from behind, intent on boxing
him senseless. What the hell could he do now? Nick thought desperately.
Then, running on instinct alone, Nick screwed his eyes tight and
projected a pulse of psychic energy towards Valesco’s lab-coat pocket,
drawing out the bag of dog biscuits he had sensed hiding inside.
At once, the biscuits caught Scorcher’s eye, and the dog bounded
immediately in their direction. As Valesco’s scarlet jets of fire opened up
from both eyes, Scorcher leaped instinctively in pursuit of the tasty treats –
straight into the path of the twin lasers.
The dog’s body exploded in a puff of fur and cooked meat. Its pieces
landed on the floor of the observation deck, looking ironically like the same
kind of bits you get in Pedigree Chum, which are ostensibly horse chunks,
but more than likely cubes of dead dog as well, Nick suspected.
‘Scorcher!’ yelled Valesco, suddenly bereft at the sight of the detonated
dog.
Taking advantage of the doctor’s momentary distraction, Nick projected a
full blast of psychic wind at Valesco’s head, sending him careening
backward, still attached to the God Socket, and through the observation
deck window, just as he’d previously done with Scorcher.
Valesco burst through the glass and fell, screaming, to the ground far
below. Seconds later, Nick heard the tell-tale explosion of the detonating
God Socket, then caught sight of a miniature mushroom cloud rising
steadily into the air, eventually ballooning upward past the observation deck
window.
And then Nick saw the plane. Too late now, he realised. No way could he
prevent it crashing into the ground this time. He’d blown it. He’d done
everything he possibly could, but Fate had decreed a failure. Nick Steen had
no time now to resurrect Christabel or Persephone. Alone, he watched in
horror as the plane plummeted downward, inches from the ground . . .
. . . then turned.
Nick could hardly believe it. Though he was urging, willing, forcing that
plane away from the ground, he had no idea he actually possessed enough
psychic strength to achieve such a feat.
But here was the proof. The jumbo jet that Roz was a passenger on had
been saved in literally the nick of time. Miraculously, with mere inches
between the nose of the stricken Boeing and the ground below it, the jet had
turned again, banking to the left, rising upward from the surface, soaring
once more in the direction of the sky, towards . . .
Nick swallowed, hard.
Towards him!
Nick Steen was the plane’s target.
Then, as the thing drew closer, Nick saw something even stranger about
it. For the jet’s wings, he realised, were leather, like vast pterodactyl wings.
The plane was part-organic! And sitting on its top, astride the main
fuselage like some terrifying bronco display, rode a thin and black-shrouded
form.
Deathflap!
 Of course, Nick realised. Deathflap had been part of his portentums all
along. Those leathery wings . . . He’d not realised it up until now because,
like he’d told Roz, Deathflap’s wings were also part-feathered. How stupid
of him to have dismissed Roz’s warning on a purely technical matter. If
he’d only listened to his editor, just this once.
But now he was doomed. Like a fool, he’d discarded Roz’s dire warning
that Nick’s sins would find him out. That Death would finally come to
claim his soul, having been cheated all those times Nick had emerged from
those aviation wrecks as sole survivor.
Now Deathflap was here to collect its bill. And Nick had no way of
avoiding it. No way at all.
Realising everything was over, Nick closed his eyes and waited for the
inevitable.
As the plane finally hit the building.

The blaze had long since died, extinguished by the high winds rolling in off
the barren Stalkford plains.
From the ashes of the ruins, slowly growing visible as the grey clouds
swirled in the breeze, rose a dust-covered figure.
The man, for the figure was male, rose to his knees, dusted down his
front, then stood, gazing around him at the mangled, twisted steel of the
decimated building.
It had been a technical facility once, he recalled. A place known only to
those who knew of its existence – and of those, there were mercifully few.
A place once known as Nulltec.
Nulltec, Nick repeated inwardly, trying to force his memory back into the
present.
He tripped over something long and rigid, then reached down and picked
up a broken, glazed, prize-winning leek. And remembered . . .
He’d survived. By some miracle, Nick had survived.
Against all odds, Nick Steen had emerged once more from the ruins,
untouched, unscathed and completely alone.
The sole survivor.
He staggered over to what remained of the building’s former observation
window, and looked out across the Stalkford countryside. There were no
sirens, now. No Julia waiting in the flight lounge to welcome him home,
before spending all his money.
And no Roz . . . No poor, sweet, frequently misguided Roz.
This time, Nick realised, looking up into those far-off, orange-tinted
intangible clouds, he was truly alone.
Then he saw it. Emerging from the vaporous bank of mist like a distant,
daytime moon.
A face.
A face in the sky . . .
Larger now, looming over the scattered remnants of destruction below it.
A human face.
His own.
The giant, colossal face of Nicholas Steen.
WRONG.
(It was the voice of Richard Burton or Robert Powell inside Nick’s mind,
again.)
YOU ARE THE NULLIFIED MAN.
Nick thought he glimpsed the trace of a body under the vast head, trailing
in the dying light like a giant, distant weather balloon.
THE SALAMANDER MAN.
ALONE YOU WILL RULE, IN THIS EMPTY COSMOS.
LOOK UPON YOUR WORKS, YE MIGHTY NICK STEEN, AND
DESPAIR (OF SEEING THEM BACK IN PRINT).
Nick screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
But there was no one in the world left to hear.

The End
 EPILOGUE
‘The Nullified Man’

‘What’s he looking at?’ said Roz, knocking one finger against the tank in an
effort to wake him.
‘His own reflection,’ said Nullman, checking Nick’s readings from a long
stream of paper spooling from a nearby computer terminal. ‘Either that, or
he’s insisting on watching the whole damned thing again.’
She reached out behind her and turned off the monitor, which showed
Nick standing on the exploded battlements of a destroyed Nulltec.
‘Quite an imagination, he has. One thing’s for certain,’ Nullman
continued, handing the paper readout to Dr Valesco, who took it from her
moodily, steering his shiny metal box on wheels into a neighbouring
corridor. ‘We won’t be plugging him into anything like our God Socket
prototype. Good job we ran a bench test first.’
‘A bench test?’ Roz asked, confused.
‘A full computer simulation of the possible outcomes. A try-out, Miss
Bloom. A rehearsal, if you will, before we wired him up to it for real. We
averted potential catastrophic failure, Miss Bloom. Your friend would have
destroyed us all.’
Roz glanced down at Nick’s face, floating blankly in the tank of fluid as a
stream of bubbles rose upward from between his dangling legs. She stifled a
sob. How the hell had Nick even got here?
‘This way, Miss Bloom,’ said Nullman, leading Roz out into the corridor,
following Valesco. ‘I’ll fill you in on what’s happened, down in our
basement office. It’s a good job you came by. You say you found the prize-
giving invitation on Mr Steen’s desk?’
‘That’s right,’ said Roz, following her out. ‘I do hope you manage to find
a cure for Nick’s brain, so that he’s well enough to receive the award.’
‘All in good time, Miss Bloom,’ said Nullman, pulling the door closed
behind them. ‘All in good time.’
 Nick watched the forms fade to nothing in the murky fluid. He thought of
screaming out a warning, then realised he no longer had any strength left at
all in his brain.
They’d nullified him after all, he supposed. As Nick gradually
surrendered to the calming, rhythmical whirring of the submerged water
pump, he elected to let his mind drift.
And wept.FN31
ARABELLA MATHERS
 PROLOGUE

‘Did you find it?’

‘Here.’ Roz handed Nullman the manuscript, still crisp as the day it had
been sealed inside a hidden safe under the floorboards of the secret study
Nick kept concealed behind a false wall in his private office, and which Roz
had only found after comparing wall measurements with the building’s
official floor plans. These efforts had also revealed the whereabouts of a
private toilet system Nick maintained immediately below his writing chair
so that he might relieve himself ‘on the job’ or ‘mid flow’, but despite the
intricate system of pipework Roz had uncovered, Nullman only seemed
interested in the manuscript.
‘Arabella Mathers,’ said Nullman, reading the story’s title out loud. Then
glanced down at the message Nick had scrawled below it in ragged biro:

Too damned raw . . .

She looked up at Roz. ‘And you’ve yet to read a word of this?’

‘All Nick told me was that the story existed,’ Roz replied, feeling
suddenly uncomfortable as she observed the writer’s slumbering frame in
the adjacent medical observation room. ‘He gave me instructions for how to
find it in the event of his death. But only in the event of his death.’
Roz felt a fresh stab of guilt plunge through her vitals. She’d been feeling
them all morning. Though Nick hadn’t woken from his coma in almost five
months, he’d finally been transferred from his sensory deprivation tank to a
normal bed, and Roz was convinced he was partly sentient. Though his
head was still wired up to all manner of medical machinery, Roz believed
fervently that Nick was able to hear, despite all evidence to the contrary, her
every word. If so, would he regard this – Roz handing over the most
private, painful story of his entire oeuvre to the head of a shadowy technical
research facility – an act of betrayal? With a nagging sense of shame, she
averted her eyes from Nick’s sleeping form.
But she’d had to, hadn’t she? After all, Roz had been imprisoned here by
Nullman as well, in a cell very much like Nick’s own, and told to find the
manuscript in question or face withdrawal of ‘privileges’ – her weekly
allowance of limited-run, signature-edition slingbacks.
Yet despite this, and Nick’s soporose state, Roz had the uncanny feeling
she’d just been sacked by her favourite author.
‘If it makes you feel better,’ said Nullman, sensing Roz’s discomfort, ‘his
death probably isn’t that far off, anyway.’ The Chief Head of the Nulltec
Corporation glanced through the initial paragraph of Nick’s ‘lost’ story,
comparing its opening words with the blurry visuals she’d seen rising in
snatches from Nick’s unconscious mind for several weeks on Nulltec’s
dream-scope monitor, materialising themselves amid regular bursts of
tortured screaming from her patient’s otherwise comatose body. ‘But if we
can somehow get to grips with what this particular story means, it might
prove to be the path to recovery for Mr Steen – if not the entire world.’
‘How so?’ asked Roz, unable to see how a story Nick had written,
immediately regretted writing, then for some unknown reason insisted on
confining to a concealed safe until the event of his death could possibly be
of any benefit to him now.
‘For some time, Miss Bloom, we’ve been picking up visual traces –
impressions, if you will – of a “repressed” story emerging from the depths
of Steen’s unconscious mind, into the lobes of his subconscious brain. As
you know, these unfathomable depths of Steen’s pysche are where we
believe his leak to another dimension is currently situated, through which
his imagination has been escaping and warping reality as we know it.
Turning our own worldly phenomena into the terrifying, living embodiment
of a best-selling Nick Steen chiller. The unconscious mind is also, as we
have discovered following a great many aborted attempts, the area of Mr
Steen’s brain that is currently sealed shut by both his subconscious and
conscious lobes. He’s locked us out, Miss Bloom. And if we cannot
penetrate our way in, we cannot hope to locate the source of the mind-leak
and block it up with industrial sealant. This,’ said Nullman, waving the
manuscript in front of Roz’s face, ‘is the key that may open the door to that
inner sanctum.’
Nick’s story? Roz thought. A story his own brain had suppressed?
 ‘Why exactly would Nick suppress his own story?’ she asked, finding it
difficult to believe that a man who’d engaged sexually with a metallic
typing implement had the desire to repress anything. ‘Is it because his own
writing has inadvertently instigated the ultimate destruction of this world
and all that we know, and he somehow feels bad about that?’
‘No,’ replied Nullman, curtly. ‘That doesn’t bother him in the slightest.
It’s something more mundane, we believe. Our computers have been
picking up traces and patterns suggestive of an anxiety disorder stemming
from his apparent dereliction of duties as a father.’
‘Traces? Patterns? I don’t understand,’ said Roz, still confused by the
impressive array of technical machinery she’d been exposed to on an almost
daily basis here at Nulltec.
Despite all the scientific gadgetry, no one but her seemed to be remotely
interested in securing Nick’s freedom, least of all Stalkford Airlines, who’d
been running a relatively crash-free service since Nick’s extended leave of
absence, and Stalkford City Council, who were quite prepared to leave Nick
festering, as long as the physical effects of his leaking imaginata were
confined to the wards and corridors of Nulltec.
‘I suppose you could say they’re like reels from a film,’ Nullman
explained. ‘Incoherent in the main, merely fragments of a longer narrative.
All we can tell from the glimpses we’ve seen, which fortunately includes a
mock-up of the story’s intended rear-cover blurb, is that the story is a gothic
horror tale, and revolves around a fictionalised writer of gothic horror
fiction, loosely based, we believe, on Nick Steen himself. A man who
neglects his daughter’s happiness in favour of his own self-serving interests,
and who, as a result, loses possession of his daughter to the insidious
clutches of some supernatural being. Evidently, the story was partly based
on real events in the author’s life.’
‘Nick had been emerging from a rather messy divorce,’ Roz conceded.
‘Which might explain, therefore, why the tale has been “buried” by Mr
Steen’s conscious mind. It’s evidently a tale too traumatic for mental recall.
Yet in his current agitated emotional state, Mr Steen’s unconscious instincts
are clearly keen to re-explore these unresolved issues.’
Nullman turned over another page, revealing the author’s dedication. ‘For
my darling daughter,’ she read aloud.
‘Nick’s not seen her in over three years.’
 ‘He may never see her again, unless we can find a way to blast a hole
through to his unconscious mind. This story will open a channel, Miss
Bloom. Chisel a way into Nick’s repressed psyche. All we need to do is
feed the text from this story into the subconscious lobes of Nick Steen’s
brain, and his entire head will go into shock. With the barriers between the
brain’s varying states of consciousness temporarily loosened, we may yet be
able to force our way in.’
Roz winced. This sounded wrong. Something about Nullman’s tone
wasn’t convincing her. Was this really the right way – the only way – to
gain access to Nick’s unconscious mind? Surely if they just left Roz alone
with him for a while, she might be able to gain access to it herself? Let her
speak to Nick for a while. Nurture him; nuzzle him physically like a lost
grizzly cub for a couple of hours. Surely then they’d be able to locate an
alternative back passage into Nick’s unconscious brain?
‘Won’t injecting this suppressed tale cause him an unbearable amount of
unnecessary emotional pain?’ Roz asked.
‘Not remotely,’ replied Nullman. ‘It will cause him an unbearable amount
of necessary emotional pain. We must get inside his mind if we’re to have
any hope of sealing up that hole. And we’ve already ordered a tub of sealant
from B&Q.’
‘Still,’ Roz said, wondering what Nullman’s reaction might be if she
were to offer up her physical services first. ‘Maybe I ought to read the story
first, just to check on its content. That way, we won’t risk damaging Nick’s
psyche by exposing him to any deeply painful memories that might
prefigure a catastrophic relapse or total psychological breakdown.’
‘Too late,’ said Nullman, inserting the last of the manuscript’s pages into
the feed tray of a nearby computer.
Instantly, the images on the monitor above them began to flicker and
change, until Roz gradually discerned the sight of a beautiful summer
meadow bordering a tall, windswept cliff top. Then she saw the car Nick
had always wanted, viewed from high above, driving at some speed along
the coastal path amid a warming sea breeze before angling southward,
through a heavy line of trees, towards a lone building in the middle of a
wood. The remote, solitary house of Nick Steen’s dreams . . .
 CHAPTER ONE
‘The House’

It looked just as scary in the sunlight. But though the surrounding trees cast
deep shadow across much of the house, its steep gabled roof out-climbed
the highest foliage, and the rounded tower I’d picked as my main writing
study rose even further past the adjacent greenery, commanding an
unimpeded view of the breaking wave-line beyond Bloater’s Cove, a mile
or so to the east.
Several arched windows ran along the top floor, spaced unevenly
between flaking, weathered panels of rotting timber. A large gabled front
commanded the ground level of the house, overlooking its wide wooden
porch. Here, on a raised platform before the main door, ran irregular rows of
warped timber boarding. Against the front entrance, angled crookedly
between two bowed planks, sat an old, half-stripped wicker chair.
A dead cat hung from the mailbox.
Perfect, I thought, even though I suspected a dead cat might not meet
with my daughter’s approval. But then technically, it was my house, not
hers.
Gwendolen would have to remember that fact if she wanted to spend the
summer here. Rather than a local youth hostel, say, where jungle law
applied.
I say the house was mine, though technically I was just renting it for a
few months. Yet it was mine in spirit, because this old building was the
ideal place for me to pen my latest gothic paperback for Garrett Publishing.
And this book had to be a success. My divorce from Carlotta had been
costly, to say the least. And while my ex-wife would be spending much of
her July and August exploring the depths of both the Aegean and her latest
voiceover coach, I’d be breaking both balls trying to work up enough
alimony to get her lawyers off my back for the winter months and, God
willing, return custody of Gwendolen to her.
 I was aware, of course, that fresh legal woes would follow. No doubt I’d
get saddled with our daughter again next year during yet another vital
writing period, but if I could ensure that this particular gothic chiller was
the best I’d ever penned, a multi-million worldwide best-seller, say, then I’d
finally be able to secure that elusive film deal Carlotta had always mocked
me about, pretend I was sorry for everything that happened by casting her
as the romantic lead, then sack her publicly on the first day of production,
citing technical problems matching the camera’s 2:35:1 aspect ratio with the
advanced width of her thighs.
That would teach the drunken, volatile, Mediterranean harpy.
Hey, she’s said a lot worse to me, okay? A lot worse. Things like, ‘You’re
simply impossible.’
Where was I? Oh yes, Gwendolen.
That’s my daughter’s name. Her mother’s choice, not mine. I would have
called her Millicent, or Maud, like a good gothic heroine. Or, if she’d been
born a boy, Mike. But, alas, it wasn’t to be. And she’s not a bad kid, all
things considered. A bit nervy, which, as I’ve warned her numerous times,
will simply make life tough for her. She has to buck up.
She really, really does.
I could sense her distress beside me even now as I swung my Jensen
Interceptor round the next curve of our sweeping driveway at high speed. I
knew my driving wasn’t the cause of her distress. After all, I’d been maxing
it past the legal limit all the way out here from Stalkford, taking out two
hares, four muntjacs and a whole colony of rabbits in just over sixty miles
of winding lanes. Which is just a fact of country living, I told Gwen once
she’d finished crying.
‘Look, it’s either that or a suicidal emergency stop causing a devastating
death-roll followed by mutual decapitation through these open windows and
a fiery inferno of burned flesh and twisted metal. But sure, the bunnies will
live. Make your choice, Gwendolen.’
As it turned out, she said nothing at all, which allowed me to push the car
even harder, shaving off an additional seven minutes at the cost of some
mating pigeons and a third hare.
No, Gwendolen was distressed at this moment because of the house. And
with good reason, I noted with some degree of pride. For it truly was a
terrifying sight. A striking, small-scale Gothic mansion right out of the
supernatural storybook.
 I’d first viewed the place in early spring, when the golden glow of a
winter dusk was still visible through the leafless branches beyond each
window as I went from room to room, planning where I’d stack my
precious bookcases and those belongings I’d stolen from Carlotta’s private
cupboards while she was out gallivanting with her most recent swarthy
lover, and which I’d told her lawyer had been donated to a charity shop for
dumb animals by her desperate, emotionally damaged daughter.
It was only old rubbish, anyway. A large batch of re-stitched lingerie and
Latino Crooner LPs, which I’d taken mainly out of spite rather than for any
monetary value. In response, Carlotta had taken my collection of Edgar
Allan Poe busts, which she was apparently using for ballast in her latest
designer yacht.
She blamed me and I blamed her, of course, but that’s the way it was with
Carlotta and I in those final, bitter weeks. And I guess our divorce was
tough on Gwendolen, who’d hit twelve last spring. We tended to treat her
like an adult most of the time, I suppose because she had that annoying
tendency to look partly like us. And even though we both knew it was
merely an unfortunate yet inevitable result of our own misguided physical
congress, from which a human-shaped daughter had ultimately emerged, I
guess the physical similarities still smarted. Though I didn’t like to admit it,
I was all too aware that I’d been regularly encouraging Gwendolen, from an
early age, to consult a plastic surgeon the moment she’d begun to fear, as I
already did, that she was fast turning into a fiendish doppelgänger of that
ruthless siren who’d single-handedly set about destroying both our lives.
And according to Gwendolen, Carlotta had done the self-same thing,
fearing the girl was starting to resemble yours truly.
Sorry, back to the house.
I’d told the estate agent there and then that I wanted the place for the
whole summer, and yet the oily squirt had made me wait a further month,
claiming a rival bidder was prepared to go much, much higher than the
current asking price.
‘After all,’ he’d slithered at me, ‘it’s a much-desired property, Mr Stein.
Especially in the warm summer months. Now, if you might possibly go just
a little higher . . .’
I’d relented in the end, of course, with a little help from Gwendolen’s
money box, knowing how absolutely perfect the place was. After all, in
what better location could one write the ultimate gothic chiller, than the
ultimate Gothic House on a Hill, situated on a lonely stretch of Stalkford
coastline overlooking Bloater’s Cove?
And write it I must. By summer’s end, Carlotta would have finished
exploring her latest wrecks, nautical and human, and would no doubt have
sunk her claws into some fresh youthful diving instructor or puffed-up
Grecian concierge, gearing up for yet another slice of author-earned
alimony from yours truly.
‘What do you think, Gwen?’ I asked my daughter, swerving left again
before braking hard beside the raised wooden porch.
Removing her seatbelt, even though I’d told her a hundred times that
there was no need to attach one when I was driving, she turned round to me
and spoke. ‘It’s lovely, Dad.’
Here, then, was another challenge to my authority. Well, I wasn’t gonna
let her off the hook this time. We were facing the whole summer together.
‘Don’t lie to me, Gwendolen. You loathe this place. It’s a rotting,
festering hulk, infested with spiders, cold in winter, swarming with wasps in
the summer. I bet there’s probably a huge nest hanging even now in one of
those rooms. Maybe your room. It’s fine, I’ll clear it out. Just don’t lie to
me, okay? I’ve had more lies than I can take from your mother. There’s no
need for you to put the boot in as well.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad. I hate the place.’
‘Jesus, that’s just typical,’ I snapped, storming out of the car. I slammed
the door shut behind me, feeling the stark bitterness of the last few months
resurfacing like a bloated corpse. Couldn’t she see I was hurting, too? Here
I was, trying to sort out a future for her, make her a buck or two so she’d be
happy, and this was how she rewarded me? Jeez, if this was her behaviour
at twelve years of age, what the hell was thirteen going to be like? Or
fourteen? Or fifteen, even? Or sixteen? Seventeen? God, can you imagine
what it would be like at eighteen? Then nineteen too, most likely. And
though both Carlotta and I would probably have turfed Gwendolen out of
our respective houses by that stage, she’d no doubt be moody with both of
us right through her twenties. You just couldn’t help some people.
I walked up to the front door, feigning my usual emotional indifference
while occupying myself with the house’s iron padlock. The key the estate
agent had given me was thick with rust and took me a while to insert.
Eventually, Gwendolen got out of the car and joined me.
 ‘I thought that tower would be perfect for you,’ I said, pointing up at the
coned eyrie facing outward across the distant ocean. Once again, I realised,
it was me who was offering an olive branch. ‘It looks out across Bloater’s
Cove. It’s extremely picturesque up there.’
Gwendolen looked up and, for the first time in a month, smiled at me.
‘Sounds lovely, Dad.’
‘Unfortunately, I need a second study with natural daylight, so you’re
getting the attic instead.’
Her smile dropped as suddenly as it had arisen. Luckily, I’d expected
that, so could stave off any hurt to me.
Generously, I offered her another olive branch. ‘If the estate agent says
it’s okay, I’ll install a window at some point.’
She nodded, solemnly.
I rolled my eyes and sighed.
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘Not hard, is it?’ I said, finally succeeding in unlocking the front door. I
stepped inside the house, steeling myself against the harsh odour of
lingering damp and dry rot. The estate agent had left a welcome pack on a
small telephone table under the main staircase. It was anything but
welcoming, I noted, being largely a stack of unpaid utility bills dating back
to a previous decade. I dumped them in the kitchen bin, preparing myself to
show Gwendolen the front lounge and rear dining room, then realised she
was still outside. I walked back to the front door and found her standing
stock still, staring at the dead cat.
‘It’s just a dead cat, Gwen. Cats die, you know. Like marriages.
Marriages die. We all die. Your mother will die. Her current lover will die.
All her lovers will die. And you, Gwen. You, too, will die. Maybe today,
you will die. Who knows?’
It sounded harsh, but she had to buck up.
‘How did this cat get here, Dad?’
‘God knows. Maybe some old dispute between an unscrupulous landlord
and his irate tenant. Perhaps a disgruntled gardener with a hideous skin
affliction.’
‘But it’s still fresh.’
‘Blood feuds can last for years, Gwen. Look at me and your mother. Can
you honestly say you’ve ever known us to be civil to each other?’
‘There’s an envelope stuck to it.’
 Intrigued, I walked over to the mailbox and saw, for the first time, a letter
attached to the feline’s twisted neck. I plucked it free and tore open the
handwritten envelope. The message inside was brief, but to the point.

WRITER.
LEAVE BLOATER’S COVE.
OR DIE . . .

‘What does it say?’ asked Gwendolen, her face growing pale with fear.
Suddenly, my paternal instincts, long since buried, awoke with a fierce
defensive intensity. I had to protect my beloved daughter from this act of
inexplicable, human evil.
‘It’s from people who want to kill us,’ I explained. ‘It’s from people who
want to kill us, Gwen,’ I explained. ‘But rest assured, that probably won’t
happen.’
She was shaking now, I noticed. Her ink-stained fingers grasped
frantically at the sleeves of her summer frock.
‘Listen, Gwendolen, it’s probably just that rival bidder I told you about.’
I spoke sternly to her, knowing I had to shock her out of a state of fear that
might rapidly consume her utterly if I let it. And I needed a steady pair of
hands to bring in all my boxes from the car.
‘The estate agent told me someone else had been interested in renting this
place over the summer. That’s why I pawned all your toys for the extra
cash. But don’t fret, Gwen. I’m not about to tell anyone round here that it
was your money that sealed the deal. They won’t come for you first.’
She nodded, shaking.
‘Now buck up and bring in those boxes. I can’t risk straining my arm
muscles, as you know. We have this place for three months only, and I have
to produce a multi-million best-selling novel by the end of our lease, come
rain or shine, or you’ll need to go to an institution.’
To steady her nerves, I got her to make us both a cup of tea, then came
outside to watch her struggle up the steps with the last of my belongings.
‘Careful, Gwen,’ I said, suspecting her increased weariness might cause
her to stumble on the bowed planking. There were at least five more boxes
of books to unload from the boot, containing piles of my very rarest gothic
novels, some almost entirely unsold since the day they’d been published.
 ‘These people are just yokels,’ I said, reassuringly, suspecting she was
still worried about the letter, which I’d already burned in our lounge
fireplace, along with what remained of the cat. ‘And yokels are philistines,
Gwen. Heathens. Ill-educated, interbred serfs, fated to die young while
operating some dangerous piece of industrial machinery. Drink, idle threats
and blind superstition are all these people have in life.’
I sat her down in the rickety wicker chair for a moment, suspecting she
was close to fainting. Then I smiled at her, for the first time in well over a
year.
‘All good gothic novels have yokels, Gwen. And a spooky house on a hill
overlooking some wild, windswept clifftop. This place is perfect for my
book. Please try and understand that. Hell, all I’m lacking here is a wicked
lord and a doomed heroine. Who knows, maybe even they’ll turn up.’
I laughed, but Gwendolen didn’t laugh with me. For some reason, those
words seemed to haunt her. It may have been my imagination, but I could
swear she almost backed off from me at that moment.
‘This house is meant for us both, Gwen,’ I continued. ‘Meant for you and
me, although mainly me. A place fit for a father and his daughter. We can
heal here, Gwen. Put the past behind us. We’ve got the whole summer. Just
you and me. And if I can write the book I know I can write here, in this
perfect house . . . we need never go hungry, or see your mother, again.’
A light breeze blew through nearby trees from the distant cove, fluttering
my daughter’s hair, which shimmered softly in the westering sunlight. She
looked magical, as if her parents’ divorce had never happened, and once
more she was filled with the hope, happiness and fleeting innocence of her
cradle days.
It was the last time I saw her that way.
 CHAPTER TWO
‘The Attic’

‘But I HATE the attic!’ yelled Gwendolen, stamping her feet on the dusty
floorboards as I cut free what remained of the wasps’ nest over her bed,
which I’d insisted she destroy by herself as a character-building exercise,
and also because I couldn’t risk having any of my typing fingers stung.
She’d emerged largely intact from the experience bar her forearms, which
were both a mass of raised welts, and for once I felt proud of her. She
looked like she might be starting to buck up, after all.
Then came the tantrum, however, which grew from my insistence that
she use the antique child’s rocking chair I’d found in the far corner of the
room to sit on, explaining I couldn’t risk damaging those same typing
fingers bringing up one of the dining room chairs from the ground floor,
and advising her to lose weight in order to fit into it. But she’d cried out that
the thing itself scared her; cried like a baby that the whole attic was creepy
and she couldn’t possibly sleep a wink up here. All I could see in front of
me at that moment was Carlotta yelling at me about my various ineptitudes,
and before I knew what was happening, I’d lost patience with her again.
‘Like I’ve told you a hundred times, Gwendolen Stein, I need all these
other rooms for my writing. I have to have the main study downstairs for
nocturnal drafting. Then I need the tower eyrie for daylight writing and
twilight pensive musing, plus the kitchen table and lounge area for lunch
and dinnertime writing respectively. Meaning that the only room available
for you is this attic. Which, I hasten to add, does not come for free.’
That seemed rather harsh, I thought. Maybe the atmosphere of the old
place was getting to me, but I could sense myself running out of patience
far more swiftly than usual. More or less the moment I’d set foot inside.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, streams of tears glistening upon both
cheeks. Well, that brand of amateur theatrics wasn’t going to wash with me.
 ‘I told you before we left Stalkford that I was going to find you a summer
job, and I have.’
‘I don’t want a summer job. I want to go out and play, Daddy. I want to
spend the summer walking the coast, looking for a friend.’
‘And you will,’ I said. ‘Once you’ve earned your keep, young lady.
You’ll be needing pocket money for those ice creams, won’t you? And the
Bank of Dad is closed until my book is written and Nicholas Stein is
officially a multi-millionaire.’
‘But I don’t want a summer job.’ She began to cry into her top.
‘Tough crap, Gwendolen,’ I said. ‘Because whether you like it or not,
you’ve got one.’ I stopped for a moment, realising what I’d just said. It had
come to that, had it? Swearing at my own daughter. I don’t think a day had
ever gone by without me swearing at Carlotta, or to Gwendolen about
Carlotta, but this was different. I’d never actually sworn at my daughter.
Of course, I’d known I’d end up swearing at her eventually. Throughout
her teenage years, certainly. On a daily basis, no doubt. In fact, to that end,
I’d even been storing up a small library of phrases in preparation, but I’d
been banking on a few months yet of largely swear-free admonishments.
But, just like that, Gwendolen had taken all that quiet parental restraint I’d
been carefully, diligently cultivating over the years, and blown it clean out
of the window with that surly attitude of hers.
What the hell was happening to us?
‘What a great bloody start to the summer,’ I said.
‘Stop swearing at me, Dad!’
Well, if I’d needed any proof that she was becoming a right little madam,
there it was.
‘Listen, this is the job, princess, if you choose to damn well accept it.
And you damn well will, I might add. Because if you don’t, you can just
skedaddle your twelve-year-old ass down to the local YMCA and fight it
out with their clientele.’
‘What’s the job, Dad?’
‘The job, daughter, is being my copy-editor for the summer.’
I thought she’d be impressed at that. Thankful, even. A chance to work
for a literary great. But instead, her face remained blanker than ever. Her
lack of gratitude, nay respect, was simply astounding. I’d never normally
hand anybody, let alone Gwendolen, the enormous responsibility of being
my copy-editor, but the truth was that my publishers at Garrett had a bee in
their bonnets about my supposed authorial penchant for ‘purple prose’. As
if gothics were written using anything else?
But times, it appeared, were a-changing, so they insisted on reminding
me. Now the reading public wanted leaner, meaner, tauter and tighter, non-
supernatural thrillers, ideally with opening chapters consisting of three
sentences or fewer. The eternal ‘female in peril’ was still fashionable,
naturally, but ideally the beleaguered wench should now be running from a
speeding car on some dusty Arizona highway, or fleeing a sinister yet ultra-
modern-looking psychiatric hospital in the middle of a dark woodland
thicket in the dead of night.
Screw that. I wrote gothic chillers, and with this book, I’d damn well
prove that sinister mansions, dusty catacombs, fluttering frocks and
supernatural terror were still in.
My book-to-be, I’d decided, would single-handedly bring back gothic
horror to the masses. Through it, I’d breathe fresh life into a dying genre,
make myself unbelievably rich and solve all my nagging marital woes.
‘It’s simple,’ I said. ‘All you need do is type up my written pages each
day on that typewriter over there. It’s vital that the typed manuscript is
completed exactly as I have written it, and in good time. No deviation from
my chosen wording, no needless embellishments by you.’
‘Is that really what a copy-editor does?’
‘It’s far more than they should be doing. Remember, no “clever” attempts
at editing. Type everything up exactly as I write it, and then your time is
your own.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Wait, I hadn’t finished. You must type up my pages before you leave this
room. Do not leave this room until you have typed up my pages. No going
out of this room until you’ve typed up my pages. Then, and only then, when
you’ve typed up my pages, may you leave this room. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘I said, is that understood?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Fine. After you’ve typed up my pages, then you can go out and play –
’kay?’
I expected her to say ‘’kay’ back, but instead she said, ‘As you wish.’
‘You don’t sound remotely grateful.’
‘How do I type up anything without a light in here?’
 ‘For the last time, Gwendolen, you’re not having access to candles.
You’re only twelve.’
‘Can’t you leave me what’s left of that one?’
‘This one?’ I laughed, holding the candle I’d brought up with me away
from her. ‘How would I see my way back over to the door?’
‘Can’t you bring me up another one?’
‘And have you accidentally burn the whole house down in my absence?
No chance.’
I looked over at the wall, which I’d decided would be too hard to fit a
window into as it was a sloping roof, and glanced instead at the empty light
socket, from which the wasp’s nest had recently hung. ‘I’ll pick up a fresh
bulb in town,’ I said, closing the door behind me. ‘Now get some sleep.’
I heard a vague trace of whimpering through the wood.
‘We’ve an early start tomorrow,’ I added.
Harsh, I know. But she had to buck up.
Had to.

I couldn’t write. I sat in my downstairs study, staring at a blank page. It

wasn’t the argument that had bothered me. After all, Gwendolen would
eventually apologise, eat her withheld meal and that would be that. And it
wasn’t the divorce, either. If I’m honest, part of me enjoyed all that endless
legal cut-and-thrustery with Carlotta. I guess it reminded me a little of our
courting days, where both of us would frequently withhold physical favours
from the other, until a culminatory bout of frenzied public frottage would
get us thrown out of whatever dining establishment had served us spicy
oysters, and the whole process would begin again from scratch. And as well
as the faintly erotic tinge to our prolonged and never-ending breakup, my
own myriad schemes for long-term revenge contained all the dramatic
suspense and intrigue of some sensational best-selling plot. Believe it or
not, I was actually enjoying my ongoing feud with the Latinate harridan.
Then what was it? Why couldn’t I write anything? Suddenly, like a bolt
from the blue, it hit me. I had too many ideas. Too much inspiration. This
house was so perfect that my mind was giddy with all the gothic
possibilities. Wild notions for grisly macabre events, evil machinations and
supernatural terrors raced through my brain like multiple bursts of morning
caffeine. The hardest job I’d be facing here would be selecting only the very
finest plot elements for my ground-breaking gothic potboiler.
For the house was nothing less than an ideas factory. Hell, it even had its
own graveyard out back, with a family crypt to boot. With that kind of
surface detail, I knew that by summer’s end, I’d finally be leaving Carlotta
in the dust once and for all, as I raced off into my own glorious future of
instant gothic best-sellerdom. Then she’d have to supervise Gwendolen.
She’d have to cart our daughter along to the next continental film set and
find ways of occupying her during her stand-in shots. She’d be saddled.
I paused, realised I was becoming stressed again. My ill temper was
definitely getting worse. The second I’d stepped inside the house, I’d done
little else but snap and moan about my lot. Far more than was my usual
wont. And, believe me, my wont was far more than usual. The house was
perfect, wasn’t it? Then why was I getting so angry?
I guided my thoughts back to reality, and realised I was staring at a
picture. A framed painting directly opposite me, hanging from a rusting nail
over the fireplace.
I stood up from my desk and walked over to it. The portrait depicted a
Victorian gentleman, middle-aged and portly, with thinning hair and thick
mutton chops. His stern countenance glared back at me through cold,
fathomless eyes. It felt as if he was staring directly into my soul.
Perfect. I smiled, taking out my notebook and jotting down that very
thought. This place was gold dust.
When I looked up at the portrait again, however, it seemed to me that the
man’s mouth had shifted slightly. Nothing major, really, and perhaps it was
merely my imagination playing tricks with me, but he almost seemed to be
sneering.
Sneering at me.
‘Screw you,’ I said, sneering back. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
I waited, but there was no reply. He was a painting, after all.
‘I’m Nicholas Stein,’ I said, smugly. ‘And you are?’
Again, no reply, but this time I sensed something else that was different
about the painting. The man’s eyes . . . Yeah, it was his eyes. They were
gleaming, now. Twinkling. If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn, for a
brief moment, that I saw my own reflection in those tiny orbs.
Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, I dropped my gaze from his, and my
own eyes immediately alighted upon a dull yellow plate nailed to the
bottom half of the picture’s rotting frame. Something was written there, I
saw, yet so covered in dust and grime that the words inscribed were almost
illegible.
I reached down and rubbed away at the dirt. The plate had been golden
once, I realised, and would take a fair amount of polishing in order to
restore it to its former glory, but the words were getting clearer all the time
as I slowly buffed them clean.
There was a name there, followed by a date.
‘Eighteen forty-seven . . .’ I read, aloud (the date first, obviously). ‘Anton
Mathers.’
I looked up at the portrait again.
The man’s sneer was pronounced, now. Either I was going mad, or the
painting had changed again.
‘Grist to my mill, Anton,’ I said, jotting down that thought as well in my
notebook, before moving back over to the desk. ‘Grist to my mill.’
I gathered up my pen and paper, hoping to gather some initial thoughts in
the bedroom instead. I was tired. An early night would do me good, I
figured. And with a fresh start in the morning, I’d head into town for some
writing supplies and maybe the germ of a plot would start brewing. God
knows it had to, I reflected, or Gwendolen would effectively be staying here
rent-free.
I picked up another guttering candle and walked over to the hall door,
savouring the harsh clump of my shoes upon the wooden floorboards.
Though there was plenty of electricity in the house, I’d elected to use
candles only so that some gothic ideas might start circulating, and had
decided not to replace the bulb in Gwendolen’s light fitting, after all. It
would make her job harder, sure, if not borderline impossible, but it was
essential that I gave my imagination full rein while I was staying here. I had
to fuel my mind day and night with gothic visions, and if that meant
Gwendolen had to spend longer in the pitch-dark attic while her eyes
adjusted by degrees to an incessant gloom, so be it. I knew she’d be
grouchy, denied vital time away from the house, and probably she’d get a
lot paler, too, lacking vital rays of sunlight. I made a note to add vitamins to
my shopping list, then, slowly, clutching the flickering candle in my hand, I
climbed the stairs.
My bedroom was large, with a vast, blackened mirror on one wall, and a
large four-poster bed in the centre. I washed my face briefly in a cracked
porcelain bowl, using the jug of water I’d brought up earlier, then settled
down in the bed, drawing the moth-eaten curtains around me until I was
fully encased in a small chamber of darkness. I’d put the candle out by this
stage, by the way. I’m not an idiot.
I settled my head back against the stale-smelling pillow, aware that at any
moment I might feel the terrifying rush of small, haired legs darting over
my face as the spiders in the disturbed curtains scuttled downward on to my
bed.
I chuckled inwardly. A small price to pay, I figured, for a book that was
ultimately going to give me the most luxurious five-star lifestyle money
could buy. Then I could worry about spiders, and not before.
I settled back with the pen in my hand, jotting down ideas on the pad, my
imagination filling in for the lack of light, when all of a sudden I heard a
terrifying scream from somewhere above.
I waited for a moment, then heard it again. Louder now. A scream of
abject terror.
Gwendolen . . .
I threw back the curtains and twisted my body off the bed. Stumbling
across the room, I cursed loudly as I stubbed my toe on the fangs of a
stuffed leopard-skin carpet, then tugged violently at the bedroom’s door
handle.
It was locked. I rattled the thing loudly, hearing my daughter scream
again from the attic, then realised I was pushing the door when I should
have been pulling it. Instinctively noting that down mentally, too, as a
potential plot detail, I rushed out on to the landing and looked up at the
winding staircase before me.
Gwendolen screamed again.
‘Gwendolen!’ I cried out in reply, rushing blindly up the steps.
‘Daddy! Oh, Daddy!’
‘Gwendolen!’
‘Daddy, is it you?’
‘Yes, Gwendolen, it’s me.’ I paused then, satisfied she could hear me at
last. ‘Will you please stop bloody screaming?’ I yelled. ‘I’m trying to write
down here.’
I waited for a whole minute, then, hearing nothing more, made my way
back down the stairs again to my bedroom.
I’d jot down the details of her nightmare tomorrow.
 CHAPTER THREE
‘The Doll’

I woke late the next day, having been up to the attic twice more during the
night to quiet yet more of Gwendolen’s screaming. Though her recurrent
nightmares might potentially provide me with a plot synopsis, I needed
sleep and I suppose she did too.
Which no doubt explained why my breakfast wasn’t ready.
Deciding it would only make matters worse if I dragged her out of bed
now, I elected to grab something in town while picking up some essential
writing supplies.
Maybe I should get something for her, too, I decided. After all, this was a
healing holiday for both of us, and if that old attic really was frightening
her, then she’d no doubt want something cuddly to grab on to for comfort if
she was going to get any sleep at all over the summer. Without rest and
recuperation, she’d stand no chance of meeting the demands of my rigorous
writing schedule.
Adding ‘cheap toy’ to the shopping list, I went outside to my Jensen
Interceptor and drove down into Cresston.
The town was small, yet felt strangely large as I drove around it. I
realised why soon enough. I was having trouble navigating because there
were no road signs to speak of. Each street was instead marked with a
succession of basic visual images that looked as if they’d been scrawled on
various walls by some dumb idiot. I pulled up beside a man in a fisherman’s
jumper and waders, and wound down the car’s window.
‘Where’s the stationery shop?’ I asked.
He said nothing. Just shook his head and walked on. I drove further along
the road and pulled up beside two middle-aged ladies scoffing cress
sandwiches by the roadside.
‘Morning, ladies. Is there a stationery shop near here?’ I asked.
 The older one answered through a mouthful of cress and bread. ‘What’s a
stationery shop?’
I brushed several small leaves from my shoulder and explained. ‘It’s a
place that sells office stationery. Pens, pencils. Reams of paper. Typewriter
ribbons . . .’
The woman ceased chewing and stared at me coldly, as though I’d said
something obscene. Without another word, both of them picked up their
bags and left.
What the heck had I said? Maybe a long word like ‘stationery’ was
confusing these people.
‘Excuse me,’ I called out to a young man marching along the road, a
bucket balanced precariously upon one shoulder. ‘Where can I buy a
pencil?’
‘No pencil,’ said the man, shaking his head vociferously, as if suddenly
frightened. ‘Just cress.’
‘Cress?’
‘Cress,’ he said, frowning strangely at me. Then he tipped the bucket on
his shoulder forward to reveal a small mound of light green miniature
vegetation inside.
‘Cress,’ he said again, smiling now. His spreading jawline gradually
revealed a mass of softened gums sporting three stubbed teeth on the lower
mandible. He reached upward with his hand, grabbed a fistful of the stuff
from his bucket, then rammed a large clump into his mouth. He munched it
slowly, shifting the crushed plants from side to side in an attempt to grind
them down.
Hell, these people were truly backward. I drove my car further on and
parked it in the middle of what appeared to pass for a town square. As I got
out, I noticed a raised platform in the centre of the yard, with what looked
like a tall iron pole mounted on a square plinth in the middle. This shaft and
its base were blackened about the lower half, as if someone had recently lit
a bonfire on this very spot. I figured we were still a few months away from
Guy Fawke’s Night, so perhaps this was what passed for routine rubbish
removal in a backward town such as this.
I looked around the square. There were several shops laid out along each
side of the courtyard, but again, I could detect no written signs to speak of.
Just paintings or drawings of what the building beyond them contained. I
could make out crude illustrations of barrelled fruit and veg, severed
animals, a fish with some potato slices beside it, and what should really
have been a simple male stick figure, but was instead an intricately drawn
penis spraying urine over a mound of poo. The version beside it, with a
necklace added, was the Ladies’, I presumed.
Well, I’d already done one back at the house and hadn’t had my coffee
yet, so I had no plans on visiting that particular establishment anytime soon.
I could do with finding a bookshop, though. I’d brought several boxes of
my novels with me in the hope that Cresston’s local bookseller might start
stocking them in bulk, drumming up interest for my forthcoming
masterpiece. With any luck, I’d soon be the talk of the town.
But there were no pictures of books on any of the shopfronts.
‘Who are you?’ said a voice, behind me. I turned to see around five
villagers gathered in a group around my vehicle. One of them was
scrutinising my car’s bonnet badge, running a grubby finger along its
grooved lettering.
‘Nicholas Stein,’ I said. ‘Though I do occasionally employ a
pseudonym.’
The men bristled visibly, one of them raising a garden hoe in my
direction. ‘What’s a pseudo . . . mum?’
‘An alternate name used by a writer—’
‘Aarrgghh!’ they yelled out as one, stepping back from me as if I’d
thrown a handful of stones in their faces.
‘—in order,’ I continued, ‘to sell a book.’
‘Aaahhh!!!’ they howled again. The older members of the group were
tensing up, I noticed, as if expecting some imminent physical altercation to
erupt.
‘I’m trying to locate a bookshop.’
The man with the hoe lunged forward, thrusting the tool in my direction.
I held fast, daring him to hit me.
‘So that I can hand over my old books . . .’
He lunged again, and I was forced to step back to avoid being brained.
‘. . . in preparation,’ I added, belligerently, ‘for them stocking my latest
novel.’
He jabbed at me a third time. I darted to one side, stepping backwards on
to the pavement. I was aware that a second crowd of onlookers were now
forming just behind me, emerging from various shopfronts.
 Suddenly a voice wailed from the vicinity of my car. The man who’d
been tracing his finger along the badge of my Jensen Interceptor launched
himself violently away from the vehicle as if in sudden fear of the machine.
‘Word!’ he screamed, his entire body shaking. ‘A w–word!’
‘What the hell’s going on here?’ I demanded loudly, aware that I had to
stay calm and controlled before these barbarous heathens. ‘What kind of
village doesn’t have a bookshop? Answer me!’
I jabbed my finger in the direction of their leader, as though he meant
nothing more to me than a cheap vocal coach for some tawdry egomaniacal
female actress.
The man held out his arm, staying the hand of the nearby hoe-wielder,
who lowered his weapon accordingly.
‘So you’re the writer,’ he said, his body stiffening as he thrust out his
pigeon chest, attempting to look taller than me. Which was impossible.
Because I’m incredibly tall. ‘The one who’s rented out that there house on
the hill.’
‘What of it?’ I asked, nonchalantly lighting a cigarette I kept on me for
just such emergencies.
‘We don’t want writers here,’ he said, nodding at someone in the group
behind him, who immediately moved around with another bunch of
heathens to block the path to my car. ‘And we don’t want books.’
It was a tense moment, and no mistake. Should I rise to the bait, tell this
lowly peasant why a basic education kept people like me in Jensen
Interceptors, and morons like him scraping cress from the sides of ponds
with a rusting hoe for the duration of their adult life? Or should I simply
bide my time and find a way out of this mess? Trade courage for caution.
Calm this wild pack, then dob these heathens in to the local police.
‘Fine. No books it is,’ I said. ‘Now, does anyone know where I can get a
really good cress sandwich?’
That flummoxed them. There was a moment of confused silence,
followed by a rush of garbled, half-literate suggestions from all and sundry.
‘Old Scrote’s got a nice patch up by the mill,’ said the man who’d fled
the car’s bonnet badge.
‘Aye, but Reg and Rhonda do a better spread – on white bread, too,’ said
another man, behind me.
‘Maybe I’ll sample a few from each establishment,’ I said, loudly. ‘And
then take home a huge wad of cress sandwiches from the best supplier I can
find.’
At once, the crowd dissipated at speed across the square, each villager
rushing off to prepare the finest sampling of cress they were capable of
cramming between two slices of buttered bread.
But the joke was on them. For I had no intention of sampling a single
cress sandwich. That was merely a ruse to get them off my back until I
could find a safe way out of here.
Amid the wild rush of departing locals, I made my way back to my car,
yanked open the driver’s door and got in. As I keyed the ignition, a scrawny
hand reached in through the open window, clutching something horrible in
its bony fingers.
A doll.
The thing was old and covered with grime. A Victorian toy, I judged
from its wide buttoned hem and faded pinafore. The bonnet on top was tied
raggedly to its scratched, china head, and the various features of the body
were attached to each other via sharp, rusted pins.
‘A gift,’ said a voice, beside me. ‘A gift for the child.’
I looked up at the open window and saw one of the most revolting human
specimens I’ve ever had the misfortune of reeling back from, with the
possible exception of Carlotta’s lawyer (who had two false eyes and a false
nose, plus a false mouth – he was essentially Mr Potato Head, but with real
ears).
The woman, if I can call her that, who now stared in at me through the
open window, was essentially a dying ferret in human form. Snaggle-
toothed, the face sharply pinched through skin resembling a fragment of
medieval parchment. She stank like an unwashed convenience and shook
visibly with each desperate intake of hoarse, wheezing breath.
‘A gift,’ she said again, rattling the doll before me, drawing my attention
back to the rotting specimen in her hand.
Well, I had forgotten my present for Gwendolen, after all.
‘Shits itself,’ said the woman-shaped thing.
Great, I thought. One of those dolls. We’d gifted Gwendolen one like it
when she was about six. You had to feed the thing certain powder stuffs and
within ten minutes, it crapped out brown sludge down one leg, which
Gwendolen had insisted on soaking free in the bath, subsequently clogging
our plughole.
 I’d ended up throwing the thing away that very morning. Still, I didn’t
necessarily have to feed this particular one, did I? I gave the matter further
thought. Either I spent precious minutes sourcing something new for
Gwendolen while wasting good writing time, or I took what was on offer
and let her make do with this ragged specimen. It was an unsightly toy, that
was for sure. But given Gwendolen’s attic room was going to be
permanently pitch-black, would she even see it well enough to notice?
‘I’ll take it,’ I said, grabbing the doll from the old crone. The legs and
arms of the toy kicked out suddenly, marching back and forth as if sparked
into action by some freshly triggered internal mechanism. A small, metallic
voice sounded from its head as both eyelids opened suddenly, exposing
black holes behind.
‘Father . . .’ came a tinny child’s voice in a strangely archaic accent.
‘Father . . . Father . . .’
I pushed the woman’s outstretched hand away from me, a little too
forcefully, as it transpired. She reeled back from the car and fell sideways
into the gutter.
‘Thanks,’ I said through the window, even though I had every
intention of telling Gwendolen that the gift was from me alone.
After all, it was important for my daughter and I to bond. And this old
woman, to be frank, wasn’t long for this world anyway.
I sat the doll in Gwendolen’s seat as I drove fast back to the house.
It didn’t complain once about my speed.

Gwendolen hadn’t done a bloody thing.

‘Where the hell’s my typed outline?’ I snapped, shocked rigid at her
blatant insolence. She was still in bed, for God’s sake. ‘I slid a page of
vague notions under your door first thing this morning, Gwendolen, in the
misguided hope that you’d have something solid to show me by lunchtime.
But you haven’t typed up a single half-baked idea. If you somehow think
this is an acceptable way to commence work for a new employer, you are
seriously mistaken, young lady. And I mean seriously mistaken. Not just
mistaken. But seriously mistaken.’
I couldn’t believe it. She still hadn’t emerged from beneath the covers.
 Well, a cold flannel had never done me any harm, I decided, though on
reflection that would involve me going downstairs one floor to the
bathroom, before having to come back upstairs again. Abandoning that
particular plan, I whipped back the covers to find her cowering in a ball of
sweat, teeth chattering, her frail body shivering like a leaf. In the candle’s
light, she looked like she hadn’t slept a wink.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘No doubt you’ll now need an hour or so to complete your
skincare regime, during which time I’m expected to somehow progress
further with my book without a fully typed outline. Daylight is wasting,
Gwendolen.’
I turned from her in annoyance. I guessed I’d just have to try and pull
something together myself from my rudimentary notes. But there was no
way now that Gwendolen was getting a mention in my ‘acknowledgments’
section.
‘The girl!’ she cried out suddenly, behind me. ‘The girl from my dream!’
I turned again and saw that she was pointing at the doll in my hand,
which I’d completely forgotten to give to her.
Unnerved by my daughter’s reaction, I held the thing out in her direction.
‘Careful,’ I said. ‘It’s one of those ones that poos itself.’
Instead of taking the doll from my hand, Gwendolen reeled backwards
against the attic wall, as if trying to get as far away from it as possible.
‘Well, that’s gratitude for you, Gwendolen,’ I said, coldly. ‘This thing
cost me over twenty pounds, you know. It’s antique. No doubt the toys your
mother buys for you are better, somehow.’
She was no longer moving, her eyes fixed rigidly on the doll. I suppose
it was a result of her tiredness, which was itself a result of her laziness.
‘Well, when you’re finally up and about,’ I said, ‘you can make yourself
useful and start writing up those nightmares you’ve been having.’
Unexpectedly, she nodded at me through the tears, and suddenly I felt
terrible. Why was I behaving so horribly of late? Why was I becoming so
dictatorial? Admittedly, I was often like that with editors, and Carlotta,
obviously, but this was my own daughter. Dammit, Gwendolen was only
twelve, wasn’t she? Yet ever since I’d set foot inside this house, I’d been
treating her like a common skivvy. Well, I’d had enough of it. She at least
needed a good breakfast inside her before the rigours of her working day.
‘Some Rice Krispies first, though, right?’ I said to her softly, cracking a
smile.
 ‘Oh, yes please,’ said Gwendolen, relief evident on her face.
‘Rustle me up a bacon sandwich while you’re at it, will you?’
She’d feel better after that, I reckoned. After all, cooking was a bonding
experience. I popped the doll on the rocking chair in front of her. She stared
at it, her body completely still now, save for a vague shuddering motion
visible in the shoulder area, which I presumed were tremors.
With Gwendolen seemingly transfixed by her new doll, I left them both
there to get acquainted.
As expected, breakfast was late.
 CHAPTER FOUR
‘The Warning’

I’d almost put pen to paper when there came a loud knocking on the front
door.
‘Gwendolen!’ I yelled out, but answer came there none. Sadly, I chalked
up another black mark against her record. With the rate I was currently
docking wages, she’d need to work an extra week in the dark just to break
even.
Disappointed, I passed through the main hall and opened the door myself.
In the wooden porch stood a lawman in beige uniform. He was tall and
broad, his wide face squared by the wide-brimmed hat he wore. A dash of
close-cut, silvering hair was visible above both ears. A holstered Colt Police
Revolver hung from his leather belt, which itself hung under his ample
stomach. He was chewing tobacco and sweating in the morning heat,
though that didn’t seem to bother him. He removed a pair of silver mirrored
shades, exposing two piercing blue eyes, and mopped a line of sweat from
his glistening brow as he spoke.
‘Hi there, stranger. Nicholas Stein, right?’
‘Correct.’
He jotted down a detail in his notebook, which I saw was in fact a
doodle. ‘New in town,’ he said, still looking at the page, which now
displayed a picture of some cress.
I sensed it wasn’t a question. ‘Relatively new,’ I replied. ‘We arrived
earlier this week.’
‘On the Tuesday,’ he said. ‘Round about three o’clock.’
‘What’s this about, officer?’
‘Nothing to worry about, Mr Stein. Just being neighbourly. Welcome to
Cresston. Nice place you have here.’
‘And your name is?’
 ‘Tate Rellington.’ He held out his hand, which I was forced to shake. The
man had a strong grip, despite his flab. ‘I’m the Sheriff here. Guess you’d
call me the law in Cresston.’
He grinned with freshly-browned teeth and spat out a glob of liquified
tobacco on to the deck.
This man might be a problem, I thought. The last thing I wanted was a
modern-day, pulp Western-invoking policeman interfering with the faux
gothic aesthetic my house at Bloater’s Cove was currently providing. A
lawman’s presence here – on my own doorstep – might play serious havoc
with the integrity of my creative vision. It wouldn’t necessarily pollute my
literary judgement, but if I wished to truly indulge a gothic mindset while
penning my future best-seller, an overweight, interfering sheriff with a gun
might really start muddying the atmosphere.
‘Will this take long?’ I said. ‘Because I’m trying to write.’
The lawman sighed, as if contemplating how to say what he was wanting
to say, then grinned. ‘Well, I guess that is what I aim to talk to you about
after all, Mr Stein. The small matter of your writing.’
‘My writing’s no small matter, officer, I can assure you.’
He balanced a foot on the frame of my front door and flicked a resting fly
from his knee. ‘Seems you’ve gone and rattled some of our locals with this
“stationery” business.’
‘It would seem so,’ I said. ‘And I’ll rattle them some more when my
book’s finally published. This one’s going to be my best yet. We’re talking a
multi-million best-seller, officer. With those kinds of sales, I could buy your
town of Cresston outright. And I’d do what I wanted with it, then, believe
me. I’d buy this house and all the other houses in Cresston, too. Did I say
houses? I meant shacks. I’d flatten those illiterate peasants and drive the
entire tribe out of town if I felt like it. Maybe I’d even drive them all
eastward, off the damn cliff.’
I was getting angry again, I realised. But this was my property, if only
temporarily, and I had a duty to protect it – and my work. And Gwendolen,
I guessed. I reached out, pointing to the mailbox.
‘Those heathens strung a dead cat up on that post. Then left me hate
mail.’
He turned his head to the mailbox. ‘What cat?’
Hell, I’d burned it, hadn’t I? Along with the threatening letter.
‘It was beginning to smell,’ I said.
 He nodded, looking even less convinced than before. ‘Look, Mr Stein,’
he said, moving the conversation on. ‘I wouldn’t go winding up the local
villagers, if I were you. They’re a superstitious bunch, I’ll admit. I guess
you can appreciate that, being a writer of gothic horror fiction . . .’
I looked up sharply. This overweight cop knew my genre of choice?
Knew the kind of books I wrote? Had potentially even read some of them?
Suddenly, I had a feeling there was more to this particular lawman than met
the eye.
‘I imagine you, of all people,’ he added, ‘know that that there
superstition business usually has some basis in fact.’
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Well, years ago, Mr Stein, almost a hundred and fifty-one years to the
day, in fact, there was another writer who lived up here. He wrote books,
just like you. And back then, just like now, the locals didn’t like it. They . .
.’ He paused momentarily, thinking. ‘How can I put this? They took matters
into their own hands.’
‘What the hell is wrong with these people?’ I snapped. ‘Are they
cavemen? What kind of a society relies on pictures for communication?’ I
pointed at the sheriff’s car, which had no markings on its side save for a
child’s drawing of some handcuffs. ‘Is that what you call civilised society?’
He didn’t even turn to look. Just kept on staring at me as he spoke.
‘What’s the set-up here, Mr Stein? How safe is this place?’
‘Safe?’ What the hell was he implying? Was I supposed to interrupt my
precious writing schedule now in order to secure some decrepit, rundown
gothic ruin against a bunch of illiterates?
Then suddenly, I saw right through the plan.
‘They sent you up here, didn’t they? To scare me? To intimidate me into
doing some basic renovation work at my own expense, so they can then up
the rent for the next poor sap.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Making things safe up here is your job, sheriff. Not mine.’
Rellington smiled. ‘I guess it is, at that,’ he said. ‘And I will keep you
safe, far as I can. Your daughter too, right?’ He looked upward, at the roof.
How the hell did he know about Gwendolen? I hadn’t told anyone I was
bringing my daughter with me, in case it potentially increased the rent.
‘Saw you both on the way in,’ he said. ‘I was patrolling up here. Keeping
an eye on things.’
 ‘My daughter’s presence here is of no concern to you or anybody,’ I said.
‘I resent you people discussing my business.’
‘The whole town’s been discussing your business, Mr Stein. After all, the
whole town wanted to rent out this house on the hill during these summer
months. Till you upped your stake.’
The whole town?
The estate agent had lied to me, then. I hadn’t been up against a single
bidder after all. For some reason, it had been the whole town trying to
crowd me out. But why?
‘Just secure the place a little, Mr Stein. A bit of DIY would go a long
way, believe me.’
I sneered at him, resolutely refusing to get suckered in on that one.
At long last, he removed his foot from the threshold. ‘Like I say, just a
friendly warning.’
He moved away from the porch and walked back down to his ’77 Ford
LTD.
‘Why are they all so interested in this house, anyway?’ I cried out. ‘Why
do they all want to rent a rundown gothic townhouse in their own
backyard?’
‘They don’t,’ he said, turning back. ‘They just don’t want you to rent it.’
As he drove off along the winding drive, I watched him glance briefly up
at the roof of the house again, before disappearing around the far corner of
our driveway. Obscured by intervening trees, I heard the Ford speed up as
he made his way back along the country lane to Cresston.
I closed the door firmly, then watched it swing back open. Presumably,
the rusted lock mechanism had finally given up the ghost.
Maybe I’d do just a little DIY.

Still I couldn’t write. I checked my watch, realising I’d been sitting at my

desk for a full twelve hours. Perhaps time itself stood still inside this house
on the hill.
Jotting down this germ of an idea, I suddenly remembered that I’d
forgotten to take any food or water up to Gwendolen – who, as far as I
knew, was hiding under the bedcovers again, frozen in terror.
 Well, I had neither the time nor the inclination to cook a hot meal for her,
so she’d have to make do with cold chicken again. Maybe hunger, or those
damned vegetarian principles she insisted on maintaining despite my
preferred chicken-centric diet, would finally shock her back into reality.
I rose from the desk, grabbed what remained of the bird’s carcass, which
I’d yet to strip fully clean, and walked over to the door. As I did so,
something on the wall behind me drew my eye.
It was the picture again. That portrait of the sneering Victorian
gentleman. For some reason, the man’s face was reaching out to me once
more. Drawing me towards him from across the centuries, and specifically
the room itself.
‘You again,’ I said, aloud, staring at those cruel, pitiless eyes. ‘I daresay
you’ve sniffed my cold chicken. Tough luck, buddy. This wing’s for
Gwendolen.’
Feeling suddenly uncomfortable again, as though the eyes were somehow
laughing at me, I dropped my gaze instinctively and alighted once more
upon that grime-covered nameplate below the canvas.
‘Anton Mathers,’ I read again. ‘Anton Mathers . . .’
I walked over to the telephone on my desk and dialled the number of
Rosaleen Bloomdale, my editor at Garrett.
‘Good day to you, Rosaleen,’ I said.
‘Nicholas? Where on earth are you? I’ve been trying to get hold of you
for weeks.’
‘Relax, I’m out on the Stalkford coast, near Bloater’s Cove.’
‘Oh, I see. Where the Pilgrim Stepfathers landed.’
‘Pilgrim Stepfathers?’
‘They left for America just after the Pilgrim Fathers, but got lost and
landed right back where they’d embarked from, two months later. When
they stepped off the boat, someone shouted, “See those Pilgrim Fathers
stepping off that boat? Pilgrim Step-Fathers, more like,” and the name
stuck.’
I howled with laughter. Thank God at least someone in this godforsaken
place had had a decent sense of humour. No doubt they’d been hounded out
of town, as well.
‘Look, Rosaleen, I want you to do something for me.’
‘Anything, Nicholas. Just as soon as you’ve handed in your new book.’
 ‘Don’t tease me, Rosaleen. The book’s in hand. This is merely some
essential research I need you to do.’
‘Sure, Nicholas. Sorry for mentioning deadlines when I know full well
you’re putting everything into this book despite a whole boatload of trying
circumstances.’
She was right. I was putting everything into this book despite a whole
boatload of trying circumstances, and was in addition doing my utmost to
make this particular book the multi-million-earning best-seller both she and
I knew I was capable of.
‘And I know that you’re also doing your utmost to make this particular
book the multi-million-earning best-seller both I and you know you are
capable of. So go ahead, Nicholas, what do you need from me? I’ll
accommodate you in any way I can.’
‘It’s simple, Rosaleen. I want you to check up on a name for me. As far
as I know, he was an old writer, from the Victorian age. Name of Anton
Mathers. He once owned this very house I’m renting, yet for some reason
fell foul of the local heathens. I’m keen to find out why.’
‘Sure, Nicholas. I can do that for you, no problem. But isn’t researching
the history of this writer an unnecessary distraction from your own writing?
Might your mind become preoccupied with this imposing, unknown yet
strangely alluring figure of a former century? Potentially forming itself into
a dangerous obsession over time, to the detriment of your own work – and,
who knows, perhaps your own psychological welfare, too?’
‘Look, Rosaleen, I’m drawing on a deep gothic energy here. I have a
hunch that this deceased writer might hold the key to me writing a gothic
potboiler so steeped in macabre intrigue and frightful mystery that it could
make both me, and you, Rosaleen, multi-millionaires.’
‘You and I, Nicholas,’ she said, correcting my grammar, which I didn’t
appreciate. ‘In that case,’ she continued, ‘I’ll crack on with things my end
and get back to you as soon as I uncover anything.’
‘Goodbye, Rosaleen,’ I said, placing the receiver back on its cradle.
I paused before the portrait again on my way over to the door. Maybe
whatever I found out about Anton Mathers could fuel the plot of my new
book. Maybe whatever confrontation he’d once had with a baying mob of
illiterate inbreds, whatever details of his life – or death – I uncovered, could
kickstart the plot of my gothic magnus opus.
 ‘You’re going to fuel my book, Anton Mathers,’ I said, addressing his
daubed likeness. ‘Defamation laws don’t apply to the deceased. Whether
you like it or not, the details of your dead life are going to give me some
ideas.’
With that, I walked out into the hall. I couldn’t see whether the
expression on Anton Mathers’ painted face altered eerily as I left, given that
this is a first-person narrative and thus non-omniscient, but I imagine that it
might well have done.
As I made my way up the old staircase by candlelight, I heard voices
above me. As I rounded the banister on the second floor, I realised they
were coming from the attic. One of them sounded like Gwendolen, but the
other, another female voice, was unfamiliar to me.
I rounded the final part of the staircase and tiptoed along the higher
landing towards Gwendolen’s room. Hearing a flurry of light laughter
beyond her wooden door, I braced myself, then pushed it open.
Gwendolen was the only person there.
In the candle’s light, I could see that she’d emerged from the bed, at least,
and was now sitting on the floor with that mangy china-headed doll beside
her. There were a couple of old chipped cups between them, and what
looked like a small puddle of black liquid.
‘What’s that?’ I said, pointing to it.
‘It’s what the dolly makes,’ said Gwendolen.
I stepped forward, smearing the spillage across the floorboard with my
boot. It was wet and lumpy, like blotched ink.
‘Disgusting,’ I said. ‘Clean it up.’
‘As you wish, Father,’ Gwendolen replied.
Something about her manner troubled me. Far too obliging, given that I’d
left her up here in total darkness for several days, bar for that small ray of
light beneath the door. It might well be an onset of temporary madness
owing to her imposed isolation, but the Gwendolen I knew would normally
have objected to my constant demands.
‘Who were you talking to?’ I asked, concerned that she might be starting
to lose her mind.
‘My new friend,’ she said. ‘Can we go out and play now?’
I looked down at the doll. Perhaps I shouldn’t have bought the thing for
her, after all. Then I recalled that I hadn’t bought it for her at all, and had in
fact taken full credit for someone else’s gift. Maybe that someone had gifted
a toy so full of old chemicals, the noxious fumes were slowly turning my
child insane.
‘Give that doll to me,’ I said.
Gwendolen did turn on me then, her face suddenly angered, looking more
like my daughter of old. ‘No, Father, this is my friend! My new friend!’
Ahh, so it was only an imaginary friend. Gwendolen had had lots of them
over the years, usually during periods of extreme emotional stress. Then it
was her doing that other voice. But this in turn suggested that she was
beginning to crack, as I’d feared. And I probably wasn’t helping matters by
keeping her cooped up in here with no natural daylight for days on end.
‘I’m sorry, Gwendolen,’ I said.
‘Sorry for what, Father?’
There it was again. That strange term of reference. I’d always been ‘Dad’
before, even when she was yelling at me. Never ‘Father’.
Something odd was happening, I sensed. Gwendolen was changing,
potentially because of my treatment of her, and/or a toxic doll. And I had
the strange feeling that part of me was changing, too. I realised there and
then that I had to do something about it.
Something major.
Tomorrow, I’d install that small window in the far wall.
 CHAPTER FIVE
‘The Witch’

There was no reply from Rosaleen all the next morning. In the end, I called
her office, but they told me she was out.
‘Hopefully doing some damned work for me,’ I said, then hung
up abruptly. I dialled the number of Cresston’s estate agent, instead. There
was no answer from him, either, which was unusual, so I elected to head
back into town. I wanted to see if I could dig up any info on the mysterious
Anton Mathers myself. There had to be a reason why this backward
community loathed writers so much, and my instincts told me that Mathers
might be the key to unlocking a real-life gothic mystery which might
ultimately net me millions. But clearly consulting the local records in
Cresston’s non-existent library was a non-starter, so I’d need to dig around
elsewhere.
Leaving Gwendolen to admire her new window, which I’d had her install
under my supervision without a hitch save for two severely bruised thumbs
and some splintered knuckles, I took the Interceptor out and drove down
into Cresston along the coastal road instead.
It was a beautiful, clear morning as I swung out over the cove, and I saw
the plume of smoke almost immediately. It grew thicker and blacker as I
approached the town, and by the time I drew up in the main square again,
the woman tied to a stake in the middle of the burning pyre had been almost
completely burned to a crisp.
I drew out my notepad and pen, keen to jot down some observations for
research purposes. I’d never witnessed a public execution like this before,
and wasn’t likely to again unless this particular one signalled the start of
some terrifying local witch-hunt – which, given the general IQ of the
Cresston locals, was not beyond the realms of possibility. The vast crowd
currently taunting the dying hag meant that parking was limited, and when
I’d finally managed to jostle my way through the jeering rabble towards the
front, I was irritated to find that most of the juicier moments had already
passed, and what was left for me to observe amounted to not much more
than half a skeleton. Nevertheless, the thing was still vaguely sentient,
which made for grim viewing – and grimmer reading, I hoped.
As I quickly took note of the more lurid, nauseating details, wondering
what other quaint murderous customs the locals around here might still
practise, a hand grabbed my arm, yanking me aside into one of the
neighbouring alleys.
‘Are you insane, mister?’ cried Tate Rellington, ushering me further
along the side street in an effort to distance me from the baying crowd.
‘You’re lucky they’re in the midst of a communal bloodlust. If just one of
those folk out there recognised you standing there amongst ’em, you’d be
on top of that pyre yourself quicker’n you could pop the lid back on that
there pen o’ yours. Which is what I reckon you should do right now, mister,
if you have any hope in hell of getting back home today in one piece.’
I did what he said. What had I been thinking, standing there in the midst
of those seething heathens, calmly jotting down my vague impressions of a
shrieking human sacrifice like there was no tomorrow? If just one of them
had seen what I’d been doing, in all likelihood there would have been no
tomorrow.
‘What did she do?’ I asked, changing the subject, and realising with some
embarrassment that I had been jeering on an old woman’s death without
knowing anything concrete about her. I guessed that was mob mentality in
action, and made a note to include the phenomenon in my ongoing novel,
which I technically hadn’t even started yet.
‘There was a death in town last night,’ said Rellington, his face suddenly
serious. ‘Benny Slacker, one of our local boys – looks after the village hoe .
. . Or looked after it, I should say.’
I knew him. That kid who’d threatened me with the hoe. A dumb idiot
called Benny Slacker, was he? Well, he was dead now. But the whole thing
seemed unreal. I’d been remonstrating with him only yesterday.
‘How did he die?’
‘That’s the weird part,’ said Rellington, frowning and scratching his chin.
‘Some folks say he was struck dumb with a sudden bout of the double-
squits. That’s vom and diarrhoea in your parlance, stranger.’
I knew what it was. After all, I’d lived in eternal fear of a joint vomiting-
and-diarrhoea affliction for years. Every God-fearing person did. It was the
worst physical malady one could imagine.
‘Sounds like a killer strain of summer flu,’ I said, ‘or a case of toxic
poisoning.’
‘Looks that way,’ said Rellington. ‘’Cept for what came next.’ The
lawman went suddenly pale, as though the very memory of it was troubling,
even for him.
‘What came next?’ I asked.
‘Well, you see, stranger, that there vomit and diarrhoea what comes out
of both ends . . . them double-squits I was talkin’ about . . .’
‘I know where vomit and diarrhoea come out,’ I said, grimly.
‘Sure, coming out as that’s one thing,’ Rellington continued. ‘But coming
out as something else? That’s literally something else.’
‘Something else?’ I replied, confused and strangely chilled, with an eerie
sense of foreboding. ‘What was this “something else” that came out of both
ends, of which you speak?’
He swallowed hard, steeling himself. ‘Well, that there vomit and
diarrhoea, stranger . . .’
‘Yes, sheriff?’ I urged, not sure now if I even wanted to know. ‘That there
vomit and diarrhoea . . .’
He raised his head, unnerving me with a chilling stare. ‘Came out as ink.’
‘Ink?’ I replied, repeating his own reply.
‘Ink,’ he confirmed, repeating my repeated reply to his own previous
reply.
‘How could it come out as ink?’ I asked. ‘Why, it would be regurgitated,
acidified foodstuffs in the main, with attendant mucous and possibly a faint
trace of blood and/or stomach lining. Not ink.’
‘But ink it was,’ he said, sombrely. ‘Black, thick, ink.’
I shivered. No way was that normal. What kind of mysterious, unknown
ink-producing malady had killed Benny Slacker?
‘It sounds crazy,’ I said. ‘No way is vomiting up black ink normal. Nor
dispersing it via the other end.’
‘That ain’t all,’ he said, steadying me with his hand as my knees
threatened to give way under a sudden, unexpected bout of trembling. ‘Not
by a long shot.’
‘You mean, it gets worse?’ I asked, hoarsely.
‘A lot worse,’ he said. ‘A whole lot worse.’
‘Go on,’ I said, my voice a bare whisper now.
 ‘I will,’ he replied.
‘I’m waiting.’
‘Then wait no longer. Here it comes.’
‘And yet I’m not hearing anything.’
‘But you will.’
‘When exactly?’
‘Right about now.’
I still wasn’t hearing anything. Then he started to speak, and I elected to
let him have that couple of extra nano-seconds.
‘When we gathered up young Benny . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘He weren’t young Benny any longer. He were old Benny. Old and
wrinkled.’
‘Old and wrinkled?’ I gasped, incredulous.
‘’Cept he weren’t really old and wrinkled,’ said Rellington. ‘Not old and
wrinkled at all.’
‘Despite looking old and wrinkled?’
‘You got it, stranger. Despite looking old and wrinkled, he wasn’t old and
wrinkled.’
‘But if he wasn’t old and wrinkled, despite looking old and wrinkled,
what in hell was he?’ I asked. The tension was now practically unbearable.
‘He was a paper bag,’ Rellington whispered. ‘An old, wrinkled paper bag
. . .’
‘Then technically he was still old and wrinkled,’ I said, correcting him,
getting increasingly annoyed at the lack of respect for words and their
employment round here.
‘I guess he was, at that,’ Rellington replied, stiffly. ‘Technically, I guess
he was still old and wrinkled.’
‘But he was a paper bag as well?’
‘That’s right, stranger. A paper bag. An old, wrinkled paper bag covered
in ink-based double-squits.’
I shuddered. What a bowel-looseningly horrendous death it must have
been to behold.
And experience, frankly.
‘You say there were witnesses?’ I queried.
‘Many.’
‘And how do you think it happened?’
 ‘It was the curse, Mr Stein.’
I looked at him, and for once I could see a trace of fear in his eyes. ‘The
curse?’
‘The curse. The curse laid on our village by that there house on the hill.’
My house? Was he talking about my private place of residence?
‘How can a house place a curse?’ I asked.
Rellington shook his head, smiling grimly at me.
‘Not the house, mister. Its ghost . . . The ghost of the house on the hill
overlooking Bloater’s Cove, just a short drive up from Cresston . . .’
‘But can a house be a ghost?’ I asked.
‘Not a ghost of the house,’ he clarified. ‘I mean a ghost in the house.’
This was madness. Was this man, an officer of the law, seriously
suggesting that a malevolent spirit had somehow murdered one of the
townsfolk?
‘If that’s the case,’ I said. ‘Why are they burning this old woman for the
crime?’
‘Guilt by association,’ said Rellington, grimly. ‘That there woman on the
spit was the only surviving distant relative of the man who used to own that
there house on the hill. The one you’re now inhabiting, mister. She was the
last known living relative of that durned writer.’
‘Now wait a moment, officer,’ I said, protesting. ‘You can’t go blaming
an old woman for killing someone in a horrendously strange and
unexplained fashion simply because she’s related to a long-dead writer the
town couldn’t stand for some bizarre, unexplained reason yet to be divulged
to me by Rosaleen, almost a hundred and fifty-one years ago to the day,
then simultaneously blame the entire thing on a ghost?’
‘Mebbe I’d get back in that there car of yours, stranger, and skedaddle,
pronto,’ said Rellington. ‘’Cause the second these villagers catch wind that
the current owner of that there house on the hill is standing right here,
amongst ’em, they’re likely gonna come for you too, pard. And I can’t
promise I’ll be able to stop them on my lonesome.’
With that, the lawman disappeared up a nearby alleyway adjoining the
current nearby alleyway, then reappeared halfway across the main square. I
watched as he asked someone in the gathered crowd for a really good cress
sandwich, and, as the villagers immediately began to disperse, realised he’d
deliberately created a diversion for me.
 I saw the townsfolk now leaving the burning, the figure on the pyre
having been reduced to not much more than bone rubble. They were calmly
going about their business again, acquiring cress from local shops to
appease the sheriff’s tastes, and I knew then that this was my chance to get
away.
I tucked my neck down under my shirt collar and made my way quickly
across the centre towards my parked car, trying to look inconspicuous.
My route took me directly past the smoking pyre, and as I neared the
woman’s partial remains, I saw that she was still breathing, but only just.
A single black, scorched lung in the middle of her charred ribcage moved
slowly in and out. I looked up and caught sight of the remains of one eye,
staring back at me from a smoking skull. Then the jaw of the thing dropped
suddenly, and what was left of the dying woman spoke.
‘Hope the child likes her doll,’ she grinned, her voice rattling like a
xylophone made entirely from bones.
My God, I realised, in sudden horror. It was the old woman! The old
woman who’d gifted me that ancient Victorian doll, which I’d claimed sole
credit for when I’d given it to Gwendolen. A doll that my daughter was now
playing with and inventing her imaginary friend via!
‘You . . .’ I whispered, my own voice now hoarse with terror. ‘You . . .’
The skull woman laughed at me, cackling insanely as I turned from the
hideous sight and sprinted across the square towards my car, praying no one
would notice me as I ran.
As I ducked into my Jensen Interceptor and swung the vehicle round, I
could still hear that laughter, echoing horribly in my ears.
As I passed by her one final time, the lower jaw of the skull gave way
and the entire head fell apart, collapsing into black fragments which fell to
the ground, vanishing beneath the grey, swirling pile of gathering ash.

I had too many questions. Why did these people hate books so much? How
could a human being shit ink? (No matter how hard I wracked my brain for
an answer, I couldn’t come up with a sane one.) And what was all this
nonsense about a damned ghost?
I just couldn’t acceptFN32 that these deaths had been caused by a malign
spirit. And yet human beings were evidently shitting ink and being turned
into paper bags, which certainly seemed on the face of it like some sort of
supernatural occurrence.
Then I thought of the doll . . . The doll I’d bought for Gwendolen, or
appropriated, if I’m honest. Why, that doll shat ink, too! I tried to stop my
mind racing, fearing that this way madness lay. But I couldn’t help it. Was
the doll connected in some way with these strange happenings in the
village? Were the instances of people shitting ink and the doll shitting ink,
somehow related? It seemed crazy, but that old lady, before she’d died, had
specifically mentioned the doll again, hadn’t she? As if to say, ‘Yes, I’m
referring to that doll again, traveller, even though I’m dying here. Now why
would that be, you’ll no doubt be wondering? I advise you to think on’t.’
Well, I was thinking on’t, alright.
Was the doll I’d gifted Gwendolen somehow behind these stories of a
supposed ghost? Maybe an answer, if there was one,FN33 lay somewhere in
my newly rented house on the hill? After all, Tate Rellington had told me
that the old woman who’d died had been the only surviving relative of the
man who’d once owned this very house. Presumably, then, that man had
been none other than the figure depicted in that portrait in my writing study.
The mysterious Anton Mathers . . .
The sooner I could find out some information on the old writer’s identity,
the better. But currently it didn’t look like I was going to get much out of
the estate agent without risking being burned at the stake myself the next
time I entered the town.
Dammit, Rosaleen, I thought, turning off the road into my driveway. Get
off your arse and get me some info, will you? (I thought this. If I’d said it
out loud, I’d have put it in quotation marks, which I haven’t.)
Ahead of me loomed the house, somehow appearing more imposing to
me now than it ever had. Maybe it was that new window in Gwendolen’s
attic. Somehow it made the place look even more frightening than before.
As though it was a prison of sorts, with poor Gwendolen its unwilling
prisoner. Maybe I should finally let her out for some air this afternoon? I
didn’t want her shirking work (as was her wont), but it felt only right to let
her breathe a little, given how much work was yet to come, and for which
she’d need sufficient oxygen in order to function more efficiently.
Then, as my eyes continued to peruse the exterior of the building, I saw
something else.
 A slight discolouring, evident on a number of the wooden boards.
Evidently, some of them had been replaced at some point. Parking the car, I
made my way around the side of the building, discovering that the newer-
looking panels were in greater evidence around the rear of the house, as if at
some point in the past, the structure itself had suffered some form of
catastrophic damage, and had been subsequently rebuilt. As I worked my
way round the perimeter of the building, I found that the far side was also
blocked by a mass of overgrown greenery. Though the path I was following
continued through it, the route itself was obstructed by a mass of
overhanging vegetation. The area evidently hadn’t been cut back in
decades. I pulled a couple of branches aside to see if I could force my way
through, then gave up at the sight of a slumping gravestone teetering across
the path itself, the stone also surrounded by weeds and creeping vines.
This was the property’s graveyard, then. Shivering at the sight, I made
my way back towards the front of the house.
Halfway round, I noticed what looked like an old cellar entrance on the
right-hand side of the building, which I’d failed to observe previously.
A set of uneven wooden steps led down to an ancient wooden door,
which opened, I presumed, into a hitherto unexplored basement area. Some
sort of crawl space under the main house, perhaps.
I walked down the steps and tentatively pushed at the door with both
hands. To my surprise, it was already slightly ajar and swung immediately
inward, creaking as it did so, revealing behind it what looked like a large,
darkened room. The walls within were black, covered in what looked like
smears of old soot. Signs of fire damage were apparent from what light now
crept in through the open doorway. I stared in, waiting for my eyes to adjust
to the gloom.
Then saw what Anton Mathers had been doing here all those years ago.
 CHAPTER SIX
‘The Secret’

A metallic plate on the front of the machine read ‘Mathers Jobber’. A lone
foot pedal connected the main surface to an inked flat printing plate,
suggesting the contraption was intended for use by a single operator, yet a
vast assembly of rusting ink rollers and printing cylinders filled the entire
floor of the basement.
I gasped, incredulous. It was a Victorian letterpress.
So as well as being a writer, Anton Mathers had been a publisher, too. Of
his own books, I presumed. At once, I felt both a heady rush of admiration
for the man, but also a stab of professional jealousy. I guessed that he, like
me, had realised publishers knew next to nothing about the art of
publishing, merely interfering with and profiting from the well of creativity
pumped forth from known visionaries – but he, unlike me, had possessed
sufficient courage and conviction to do something about it. He’d gone and
set up his own printing press in the basement under his very own house.
All I had, by comparison, was a surly, perennially tardy daughter in an
attic.
Perhaps I was being too harsh on myself. After all, I’d been saddled for
numerous years with a wayward, disobedient wife claiming an apparent
‘career’ of her own, hadn’t I? I’m sure it would have been very nice to set
up shop for oneself unhindered by the demands of maintenance payments
and non-stop custody haggles, but some of us weren’t quite so lucky, were
we, Anton, old pal?
I stopped myself, sensing I was getting unnecessarily angry again. And
maybe there was no need. After all, how did I know Anton hadn’t been
saddled with his own wayward Furie? Though I hadn’t noticed anyone else
depicted in that portrait upstairs, did it necessarily mean he’d been living
here alone all those years ago? Maybe he’d had a wife in tow. Unless he’d
topped her, of course. Maybe he’d fed chunks of her into this very printing
press.
I stopped myself, again. Where the heck were all these destructive
thoughts coming from? Here I was, intending to spend a peaceful three
months with Gwendolen writing a ground-breaking gothic chiller by the
sea, and all of a sudden I was enjoying witch burnings, incarcerating my
own daughter in a windowless attic and thinking about feeding divorced
partners into a mechanical printing press.
What gave?
Shuddering inwardly, I shook off my dark thoughts and stepped
tentatively around the vast iron contraption. The room, I noticed, formed
part of the original building. Though the upper structure of the house
appeared to have suffered extreme fire damage in the past, this basement
area looked to have survived largely intact. The letterpress itself lay
untouched since the day it had last operated, and I suspected that the black
soot lining the walls instead originated from the part of the building that had
been destroyed previously. I reached up to the ceiling and felt the cold touch
of an iron girder.
That explained it, then. The basement alone had been reinforced against
the risk of fire, presumably to protect the machine in front of me – and, by
extension, the career of Anton Mathers.
Curiosity drew me further into the room, and I began to detect an odd
scent in the air; a vaguely chemical odour, like something wafting upward
from an old spillage.
The floor below looked darker the further I crept into this cramped and
dusty space. Waning light from the open doorway at first made me assume
this was but a trick caused by an increase in the surrounding shadows, but
soon I discerned a curious patterning to the swirls of black on the ground,
and, bending down, I ran my finger along the cemented floor. The dark
patch beneath me was a stain of some kind.
As I drew my finger back, I noticed some of the stain had come away
from the floor, marking the skin of my fingertip. Instinctively, I dabbed it
against my tongue, and gagged.
Whatever the stain was, its taste was nauseating. I began to heave,
coughing as I did so, hawking up a large globule of black-looking phlegm.
I rushed back towards the light, intent on gaining some fresh air and a
glass of water, and tripped over something in front of me. I looked down
and saw a row of metal boxes lined up across the basement floor. No doubt
distracted by the letterpress itself, I’d somehow missed them on my way in.
They were impossible to ignore now. There were around thirty of them, I
counted, with probably twice that many stored in the neighbouring shadows
beside me.
I reached down and pulled one of the boxes towards me. It slid heavily
across the ground, grinding a trail of dust in its wake.
There was something inside.
The carton itself was sealed with a rusted padlock. I looked around for a
heavy object, spied a pile of collapsed rubble by what had evidently once
been a fireplace (perhaps a reason why the house above it had burned
down), and picked up half a brick.
It took only a couple of strikes to break the rusted lock in two. Tossing
aside the shattered fragments, I flipped open the box’s metal lid and turned
it towards the open door so that I could see what the contents were.
Books.
Beautiful, unread books.
With emerald-green covers.
I lifted one out and read the title aloud.
‘Vampton Grange, by Anton Mathers.’
Though the book was in such a wonderful state of preservation that I
need hardly be cautious about damaging it, I took care as I turned over the
cover and read its opening paragraph.
And got no further than that.
It was brilliant.
Macabre. Suspenseful. Terrifying.
Perfect.
The work, I recognised in that instant, of a genius.
I closed the book again, delicately. Again, not out of caution, but out of
deference.
For I alone was in the presence of a true master of the literary gothic.
Taking the book with me, I staggered across to the open door in a daze,
pulled it shut behind me and returned immediately to my writing study
inside the house.
Then read the entire thing.

*
I slammed down my pen and tore up my opening page. What was I
thinking? Whatever my mind considered worthy of reading at one point was
fit only for the bin the next. Any horror I cared to conceive of, any terror I
now dared create, simply paled into insignificance against the effortless,
gothic grace of Vampton Grange by Anton Mathers.
I looked across the room at his portrait. His face was still staring at me.
Sneering at me. No doubt amused by my stillborn efforts at competing with
his own literary genius.
The very sight of him gloating over my stalled efforts filled me with a
nausea so sickening I could barely hold down my evening meal. Which I’d
had to make entirely by myself once more, Gwendolen having failed yet
again to make her way down from the attic, despite me allowing her twenty
minutes of daylight for good behaviour.
What the hell was she doing up there? Playing with that damned doll
again, no doubt. It was high time I took the thing away from her, I decided.
Whether or not it had any direct involvement in that bizarre yet lethal
vomit-and-diarrhoea-related death in Cresston, the thing was now
interfering with my own work schedule, and that I could not allow.
As I stood up, I felt a queasy feeling; a strange rush in my lower stomach.
I shook off a vague sense of dizziness and made my way by candlelight up
the stairs.
I’d half expected to hear voices from outside the attic door, as before.
Previous imaginary friends created by my daughter out of psychological
necessity had usually lasted for at least six months, if not a year or more,
but if this sudden silence was anything to go by, Gwendolen had either
fallen out with her own brain buddy already, or was instead fast asleep.
As it turned out, neither was the case. As I nudged open the door, I was
surprised to see her sitting in the middle of the floor again, diligently going
through my page of initial ideas and writing out what looked like a vaguely
competent plot outline.
‘So you are working?’
‘Of course I am, Father.’
I looked down at the page she was writing on. She hadn’t taken her eyes
from it since I’d entered the room.
‘Well, what do you think?’ I asked, feeling vaguely self-conscious. ‘Is it
any good?’
‘It is now.’
 ‘Oh, is it, indeed?’ I said, haughtily. Then reached down and grabbed the
page from her hand.
Dammit, if it wasn’t halfway decent.
Who was I kidding? Gwendolen’s edits were great. Truly great.
‘Still needs some work,’ I said, tucking the page into my jacket pocket.
‘I’ll bring up a revised version later. By the way, where’s that doll?’
‘Arabella has it,’ she replied.
I froze, pausing to process Gwendolen’s words. Who on earth was
Arabella? Presumably it must be the name of my daughter’s imaginary
friend.
‘I asked you where the doll is, Gwendolen.’
‘I told you, Father. Arabella has it.’
I was losing my patience again. ‘Who is Arabella?’ I said.
‘Arabella is my friend.’
‘I understand that, Gwendolen, but Arabella who?’
‘Arabella Mathers.’
Mathers? How did she know that name? As far as I knew, I’d yet to have a single
significant conversation with Gwendolen since we’d moved in here, let alone one
concerning the previous owner of this house. Could she have plucked that very name out
of the blue, or was there some other, more sinister, explanation for her choice of imaginary
surname?
‘And this “Arabella Mathers” has your doll?’
‘That’s correct, Father,’ Gwendolen replied, running her hands through
that same patch of spilled ink on the attic floor, drawing what looked to me
like a strange black figure upon the wooden boards.
‘And where is Arabella now?’ I felt suddenly nauseous again, as if I was
about to throw up and shit myself at exactly the same time.
‘Out playing,’ said Gwendolen.
‘Out playing?’ I repeated, desperate for a straight answer from her. ‘Out
playing where?’
‘In the graveyard, Father,’ my daughter replied, finishing off her
impression upon the ink-coloured floor of what looked to me, from this
angle, like a young Victorian girl.
‘Why on earth would this Arabella Mathers be out playing in a
graveyard?’ I asked.
Finally, Gwendolen looked up at me.
‘It’s her home.’
 *

It had to be the ink. Whatever lay inside that doll, whatever bizarre
contraption motored the toy’s mechanism, making it release an unpleasant
stream of black effluence down one leg, had to be the source of
Gwendolen’s increased strangeness. I daresay my confining her to the attic
for days without adequate daylight, food or water wasn’t exactly helping the
situation, but that was something both Carlotta and I had done a hundred
times before whenever we’d wanted to watch something on television, and
back then it hadn’t done Gwendolen an ounce of harm.
So it had to be the ink. An ancient concoction of toxic chemicals, no
doubt long since festered into some noxious vapour that quietly clouded the
owner’s judgement without him or her even knowing. Gwendolen’s
protective subconscious instincts must have caused her to chuck the thing
away, I figured, where it would cease doing her any permanent damage.
Perhaps she’d thrown it out of her new window and was still in a state of
psychological denial.
Yet what of this new ‘friend’ of Gwendolen’s? The mysterious Arabella.
The rational part of my mind wanted to see her as simply a figment of my
daughter’s ink-addled brain. Yet I couldn’t help but recall Tate Rellington’s
mention of a murderous ghost at loose in the village. A ghost that caused
people to shit ink and turn into paper bags. Might there, after all, be a grain
of truth in the tale? And if so, was my daughter, and that ink-shitting doll of
hers, somehow part of its modus operandi?
As I pondered all this, scarcely believing I was giving the idea any
credence, I thought again of my pressing schedule and how these strange
events were speeding me further and further towards my looming deadline,
with not a jot of any real writing being done between them. Feeling a
sudden stab of anxiety, I picked up the phone on my desk and dialled
Rosaleen’s number.
‘It’s Nicholas,’ I said, slurring my words slightly. I was on the whisky
again, in an attempt to stop myself feeling nauseous. I didn’t tell you I was
on the whisky before, did I? Well, I was. On the whisky. That’s how
stressed I was becoming. So stressed that I was on the whisky.
‘Hi Nicholas,’ said Rosaleen. ‘It’s Rosaleen.’
‘I know that. What have you found out?’
 ‘Nothing yet, I’m afraid. There seems to be no mention of any writer
called “Anton Mathers” on any kind of official record. And I’ve been
extremely diligent in my investigations.’
‘For Christ’s sake, woman, pull your finger out,’ I said, slamming the
receiver back on its cradle. I really was getting tetchy, these days. But what
the hell could I do to speed things up? Before I knew it, Rosaleen was going
to cease being deferent to me and would start mentioning, instead, my
supposed ‘contractual obligations’. Everything was starting to go wrong,
damn it.
Then, quite suddenly, I smiled. For almost immediately, a solution had
formed itself in my mind. A plan, devious perhaps in spirit, yet one that
would single-handedly solve the issues of my pressing schedule and the
attendant delays caused by Gwendolen’s temporary lunacy.
I sat there in the armchair, staring at that portrait of Anton Mathers on the
wall in front of me, and raised a glass of whisky in his direction.
‘Congratulations,’ I said, aloud, ‘on a truly brilliant gothic novel.’ I
gulped the spirit down, savouring its harsh, bitter sting as the fluid burned
my open throat. ‘And thank you.’
Did I detect a subtle shift in the portrait’s gaze at that moment? A fleeting
glance; a trace, say, of apparent fear in its eyes?
‘Correct, Anton,’ I said, rising from the chair before pouring myself a
fresh tumbler of Grant’s. ‘Thank you. From me, Nicholas Stein, esteemed
author of the pulp gothic, to you, Anton Mathers, un-esteemed and wholly
unknown author of the literary gothic.’
I stumbled towards the portrait clutching my whisky, grinning from ear to
ear. In my other hand I held up the copy of Vampton Grange. Raising my
glass again, I turned my head and kissed its beautifully produced, emerald-
green cover.
‘Thank you, Anton Mathers,’ I said, addressing the portrait once again,
‘for this, the most successful, multi-million-selling gothic chiller by
Nicholas Stein.’
I laughed. God, how I laughed. I couldn’t stop the laughter. The sheer
bravado, the brazen ingenuity of a plan that had come to me so suddenly
among those dark and creeping shadows of that old house on the hill. By
publishing Anton Mathers’ unsold and unknown book as my very own
work, I could swiftly secure my divorce, hand Gwendolen back to Carlotta,
and enjoy a life of literary luxury at last, in one fell swoop.
 ‘Bad luck, friend,’ I said, necking the whisky in one, before realising I’d
necked it already and my glass was now empty. I tossed the tumbler aside,
reached out again with my hand and lifted the portrait from the hook on the
wall behind.
Still laughing, I turned the picture round, then fastened it back in place,
its front now facing inward, against the wall, so the face of Anton Mathers
could no longer taunt me.
‘Goodbye, Anton Mathers, you loser,’ I said.
Then I heard it.
Quiet at first. A mere whisper. Then the source drew nearer, and I
realised it was a voice calling from outside.
A girl’s voice, light, almost playful, singing out a name gently in the
darkness.
‘Gwendolen . . . Gwendolen . . .’
Was it my own daughter, crying out in her madness? Was she sleep-
walking again, like she’d done so often as a child, wandering along
motorways when we’d forgotten to lock the back door? Or did this voice I
was hearing belong to someone else entirely?
I stepped out into the hallway and made my way towards the front door
of the house. Then caught a fleeting glimpse of something white standing
there on the raised porch.
I flung open the door and saw what looked like a cotton frock
disappearing around the side of the house, heading towards the overgrown
graveyard.
There was no escape that way, I knew, quickening my pace to catch the
nocturnal intruder. Maybe Gwendolen had met a real friend after all,
through that newly opened attic window. A trespasser on the property who
evidently thought itself clever enough to play some form of ghostly
‘postman’s knock’ with me in the middle of the night.
Well, I’d show them.
I rounded the corner at speed and immediately became tangled in a thick
cluster of winding vines. There was no one ahead of me. Just a mass of
overgrown vegetation, blocking the path ahead.
I struggled blindly, lashing out at the choking greenery, forcing my way
through.
Then suddenly the path ahead cleared, and I found myself inside a small
opening in the trees. The place was lit from above by a gibbous moon (in
fact, the gibbous moon – there’s only one) and I realised I was standing
within a small circle of leaning gravestones.
A flurry of movement in the far trees caught my eye. This time, I saw
more clearly the white flash of a Victorian frock, vanishing into the
greenery beyond.
Then I heard that laughter again – a child’s laughter. And knew there and
then that it wasn’t Gwendolen I was chasing, after all. Of that I was certain,
for my daughter had singularly failed to laugh once through the entirety of
her twelve years on this earth.
I ran forward, darting through the crooked gravestones, desperate to
unveil the identity of this watcher in the woods.
Then, as I pushed away the swinging branches masking my view of the
child running ahead of me, I stumbled into a sudden ditch and fell.
Clambering forward again up the rough verge, I finally saw it. Staring
directly at me from the furthest edge of the graveyard.
No longer running, but waiting there, still as a statue.
Waiting for me.
It was the doll, perched on the top of an angled gravestone. A light breeze
moved through the trees behind it, coming from the nearby cove, fluttering
the toy’s grubby dress, which had once, years before, shone clean and
white.
I stepped forward through the mud and grass, no longer hurrying, and
finally reached the leaning gravestone.
I picked up the doll in my hands, so that I could read the name on the
marker below it.

ARABELLA MATHERS
DIED 1857

A scream filled the darkness, and the doll began to shriek. Its hands and feet
burst into sudden motion as my own palm flinched at a cold rush of
expelled ink.
It had done one on my hand. In panic, I reached behind the doll’s back
for what I hoped was an operating key, hearing at that same moment a
sudden sound emerge from the area of its mouth.
The words it spoke came from a tinny voice-box somewhere inside,
before my harsh, instinctive twist of the lever swiftly cut the noise off. But
I’d heard enough already. I’d caught those dreadful words coming from
inside the doll, and they’d chilled me to the core. Words I was unlikely to
forget.
‘Help me, Daddy! Please! Help me, Daddy! Please! Help me, Daddy!’
They could have come from my own daughter.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
‘The Plague’

I sensed the flashing lights long before Rellington knocked on my front

door. I’d been awake most of the night, haunted by frightening dreams and
several urgent trips to the toilet. The events of the previous night were
already clouding my mind, blending with the world of nightmare, as though
the Sandman himself had poured grains from both worlds into my sleeping
ear, then mixed them around with a wooden whisk, adding some green dye
to create a devilishly evil metaphorical cotton candy that he’d then yanked
out and forced me to chew at clawpoint.
I gagged, still feeling nauseous. Then froze as my mind caught a sudden,
vivid yet essentially still indistinct flash of half-remembered dream.
Green cotton candy . . .
Not pink, like normal cotton candy.
No, the particular metaphorical dream-based cotton candy mixed into my
ears by the proverbial Sandman of imagination had, in this case, been
emerald-green . . .
I dragged myself out from under the covers, pulled back the curtained
enclosure of my Victorian four-poster bed, and made my way downstairs as
Rellington hammered loudly on the front door. When I opened it, he placed
his foot immediately on the threshold again and came straight to the point.
‘I think you better let me talk to her.’
‘Who?’
‘Your daughter, Mister Stein. I know she’s up there.’
‘She’s sleeping,’ I said.
‘Mebbe you could go wake her up.’
‘Not until you tell me what this is about, Rellington.’
The lawman paused, staring strangely at me. ‘You feeling okay?’
‘Never better,’ I said, lying through my teeth. If I’m honest, I felt like all
my insides were about to burst through every conceivable orifice. ‘I asked
you what this is about.’
‘Well, mister, ten more people died in Cresston last night.’
Maybe it was the nausea, but for some reason I was no longer shocked.
‘Vomiting?’
Rellington nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘Plus diarrhoea?’
‘Uh huh,’ Rellington said, nodding again. ‘The double-squits.’
‘Both excretions consisting of an inky texture?’
‘You got it, mister.’
‘And everyone subsequently turned into paper bags?’
‘Reckon so. But before they all died, them there various victims reported
seeing a young girl in their vicinity at exactly the same time they began to
feel ill. A young girl in old clothing. Victorian clothing. I guess what I’m
saying is, it was a young girl in old Victorian clothing.’
‘Presumably it was the ghost?’ I said. For, as crazy as the notion might
have seemed to me before now, the presence of a supernatural entity could
potentially explain that strange, ghostly figure I’d glimpsed the night
before.
‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ he replied. ‘I want to know where your
daughter was last night.’
My daughter? Why the hell did he want to know what my daughter had
been doing?
‘She was right here,’ I said. Although technically I couldn’t vouch for
that, I realised. For I’d gone outside myself for some of that time, hadn’t I?
Leaving Gwendolen upstairs alone. Could she have left the house in my
absence? Surely not. Surely my daughter had no reason to leave the house
in the middle of the night. Besides, I’d left her specific instructions not to
come down until she’d completed the work I’d set her, hadn’t I?
But then she had finished that work, hadn’t she? That rudimentary plot
outline I’d set her, then roughly taken back, telling her to await my next
round of notes. Notes that weren’t going to materialise at all now, given I
was about to publish the work of Anton Mathers instead and pass his books
off as my own. Had Gwendolen subconsciously picked up on that fact? Had
she somehow got wind of my plan and taken the opportunity at last to sneak
out for some air?
If that was the case, then Rellington might be right, after all. Gwendolen
could well have been outside last night. But would my daughter’s nocturnal
presence in the town be enough to cause an entire community to lose
control of their bodily functions and die in such monstrous fashion?
Unless . . . Unless . . . Unless Gwendolen had taken that damned doll
with her! The doll I’d seen sitting on the top of that gravestone. Maybe
she’d left it there temporarily before carrying it with her into the town? And
maybe whatever was inside that eerie, ink-filled doll, was, as I’d long
suspected, some deadly poisonous substance? Maybe there was methanol in
it? Or mercury? Or even, God forbid, those other poisonous chemicals that
are far worse, and which I could never research the official names of
without the authorities marking me down as a potential ‘person of interest’ .
. . Maybe Gwendolen had inadvertently handed it over to some
unsuspecting person in the town?
I thought suddenly of my own nausea. That urgent need to vacate my
bowels in all directions. I’d handled the doll myself, I realised, grimly.
Maybe it had passed on its dreadful poison to me, too?
And if it was the doll itself behind these multiple deaths, then Gwendolen
might well be guilty of murder, after all . . .
I began to sweat.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ asked Rellington, who’d been waiting
patiently while I processed all these internal reflections.
‘I saw a ghost last night,’ I snapped, attempting to steer the subject away
from my daughter.
‘Well, you’re all seein’ something, for sure,’ he said. ‘Crazy as it sounds,
folks in Cresston think a witch is afoot.’
It did sound crazy. A witch and a foot are completely different things.
Unless he meant the villagers believed a witch was abroad. Which itself
was mildly confusing, as it could mean either that a witch had been seen in
the area or that a witch was currently holidaying on foreign shores. I
presumed he meant the former. Which itself didn’t sound crazy to me at all.
The villagers had already burned one, after all.
‘Another witch?’
‘And I might as well say now that a witch don’t necessarily mean no
woman, neither. ’Cause some witches are men.’
‘I do know that, you know. I am a practitioner of the literary gothic.’
‘Meaning,’ he continued, ignoring me, ‘folks might start thinking there’s
two witches in Cresston, if you catch my drift. One of them a male witch,
and the other a lady witch.’
 ‘What are you implying?’ I said.
‘I’m saying mebbe you should let me take your daughter into custody, Mr
Stein. For safe-keeping, you understand? Before the villagers get to her
first. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to witness that particular burning.’
I considered this for a moment, and had to admit he was right. No matter
how angry I might get with Gwendolen on a daily basis, no amount of
tardiness and bad attitude could possibly justify witch-burning for anyone
under the age of eighteen.
‘I reckon you should leave, too,’ he added. ‘I’ll meet you on the outskirts
o’ town after dark, hand you over your daughter, and then you can both ride
on out of town, with no one here the wiser. Ride on back to Stalkford.
Before superstition starts reigning over law and order.’
‘You don’t believe she’s a witch, then?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘I may read about ghosts and witches, Mr Stein, but I don’t
believe in neither. Sadly, though, the folks down in Cresston do. And until
they start reading a durned book or two, my job round here is keeping the
peace, and makin’ durned sure only the right people get burned.’
His intentions were noble, I supposed, but there was no way I was going
to sacrifice the writing of my gothic masterpiece for a bunch of illiterate
peasants.
And he wasn’t going to take custody of Gwendolen, either. What
guarantee did I have that he wouldn’t immediately arrest her for the
killings? Rellington had a duty to apprehend suspected murderers, after all,
and right now Gwendolen was public enemy number one. Even though he’d
helped me out several times so far, the sheriff was ultimately in the pay of a
witch-burning rabble. No, I had a duty to protect Gwendolen from these
false accusations. She was partly my daughter, damn it. A bad and
ungrateful one, certainly, but she was partly my flesh and blood, and no one
was going to incarcerate half of her against her will except me.
‘I told you before, sheriff. I was with my daughter all night and can
vouch for her being at home. Unless you’re about to accuse me of being an
accomplice to whoever or whatever committed these bizarre killings?’
His smile softened. ‘Not at all, Mr Stein. You take care now.’ Still
grinning, he stepped down from the wooden platform and made his way
back over to the squad car. ‘A friendly warning is all,’ he said, opening the
car door. ‘Like always.’ His smile finally dropped as a look of genuine
concern crossed his face. ‘Truth is, I might not be able to hold them off
forever.’
I nodded, respectfully, watching as he drove away, then doubled up
suddenly and projectile-vomited all over the raised porch.
Panicked, I examined the stain I’d made between heaves. It wasn’t ink, I
noted with relief. Just ordinary vomit. Yellow, bits of vegetable, etc. So, the
poisonous doll – if it was a poisonous doll that was causing all this – hadn’t
got to me yet. I whispered a small prayer of thanks to the Almighty. For
despite an increasing fear of the creeping unknown, the vomit I was
currently expelling from my contracting, quaking guts wasn’t black ink.
Yet . . .FN34

Had Gwendolen gone mad, after all? Was she finally displaying the malign
genetic influence of her mother’s side? Was my precious daughter leaving
the house in the middle of the night, disobeying my specific instructions to
stay indoors, in order to inadvertently and unsuspectingly poison the
townsfolk with some hideously mutated, self-producing ink from her
ancient, creepy toy doll? Or was she even doing it deliberately? Maybe
she’d realised how cruel the townsfolk were being to me and my career
plans, and had decided to make the ultimate sacrifice, doing away with all
those who were criticising or hampering my writing career in order to
secure her father a multi-million best-selling writing opportunity?
For that reason alone, I couldn’t let Rellington take her. I just couldn’t. If
Gwendolen was doing all this for me (and to be fair, she ought to be), then
killing everyone who opposed me was both an act of love and a way of
validating her beloved father’s writing. If that was the case, I’d protect her
even more, dammit. Clearly I’d been wrong about her all these years.
Clearly, she’d been more of a daughter to me through this one simple act of
mass murder than through anything I might have expected from her daily
editing routine. In fact, she’d been far more than a daughter.
She’d been a son.
At that thought, I felt something I’d never ever felt before, not even for
Carlotta in those early days.
I felt love.
 Love for my daughter, who was more like a son to me now. A beloved,
dutiful son.
My darling Gwendolen . . . (or Graham, once I’d sorted it by deed poll).
But what if, instead, there were a grain of truth to these villagers’ fears?
What if there were a real ghost haunting the village of Cresston, just down
the coast from Bloater’s Cove?
What if this mysterious Arabella Mathers had somehow come back from
the dead?
It seemed madness to even consider such a possibility, but I couldn’t keep
myself from recalling that fear of the unknown I’d experienced the night
before. That terror I’d felt at that strange figure, who may or may not have
been Gwendolen, running out into the night, crying my daughter’s name
into the wind. A figure who’d also left my daughter’s terrifying doll on the
top of that gravestone. A gravestone bearing the name of Arabella Mathers,
whose ghost may or may not have been speaking to my own daughter. A
ghost that was possibly, for some unknown reason, causing the deaths of
nearby villagers, and in the process landing the blame squarely upon the
head of Gwendolen.
I, as her father, had to step in. Had to stop these incessant internal
ruminations and protect my precious daughter from these destructive,
unknown forces. I, who’d been blindly shutting her up in a darkened room
that terrified her, had to realise once and for all the error of my ways and
ensure that this time, the dreaded door to the attic had to be closed for the
last time on my precious daughter and finally locked shut.
Steeling myself, I made my way up the stairs, taking with me a cup of tea
for Gwendolen, which I’d finally learned how to make, having studied the
process in detail from a passage I’d read in Anton Mathers’ book.
The attic door was ajar as I made my way up the final flight of stairs, and
as I nudged it fully open, I found Gwendolen sitting on the edge of her bed,
dressed in a white Victorian gown.
‘Good morning, Father,’ she said, brightly. It was like the old Gwendolen
again. The one I’d imagined might exist for real one day.
‘Morning, Gwen,’ I said, reciprocating her joyful mood and handing her
the tea.
She sipped it contentedly, then pulled a stray lock from her cheek and
looked up at me, beaming. ‘Can I go out and play today? Arabella says
you’ll be using her daddy’s book instead of your own.’
 I froze, unable to believe what I’d just heard. ‘What did you say?’ I said.
‘Your book,’ she replied, taking another sip of tea. ‘Arabella says you’ve
decided not to write one yourself, and that you’re going to use her father’s
book instead and pretend it’s yours.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said.
‘She says it is true. She says you found all his books in the basement and
now you’ve decided to pass off his work as your own. Arabella’s very angry
about that.’
‘Is she, indeed?’ I said, trying to remain calm. But inside I was chilled.
Had a real ghost, if that’s what Arabella was, somehow been watching my
movements? Was the malevolent spirit of the daughter of a long-dead gothic
author truly communing with my own child? It had seemed like madness a
mere moment ago, yet now it seemed like the only plausible explanation.
‘Arabella hates you,’ said Gwendolen, as if those words were a perfectly
ordinary utterance. ‘She says she’s going to kill you.’
This was madness, I realised. Though I admit that I had every intention
of stealing Anton Mathers’ work, what on earth did that have to do with his
daughter? Ghost or no ghost, she should know her place and speak only
when spoken to.
‘Arabella should speak only when she’s spoken to,’ I said.
‘Arabella says you’re just like her own father.’
Surely this was all a joke? Yet there was no possible way Gwendolen
could have known about my plans for Vampton Grange, unless she had
been out during the night after all, and had somehow discovered the secret
basement under the house, like I had. But if that was true, then there was
still the possibility she’d committed those murders in the village after all, by
accidentally poisoning everyone with her rotten doll . . .
A cold feeling ran through me. Neither option was great, to be honest.
Either Gwendolen was mad and a murderer to boot, or we were being
haunted by a malevolent child-ghost, after all. In which case, both
Gwendolen and I, and the whole town for some as-yet-undisclosed reason,
were doomed to die vomiting up and excreting black ink before turning into
old parchment, which was not my idea of a peaceful summer holiday.
I had to be sure.
I had to know.
‘I want to discuss this entire thing with Arabella,’ I said. ‘The last thing I
want to do is anything that might upset her or her father.’
 ‘That’s wise, Father,’ said Gwendolen.
Now came the crunch. The moment when, if Arabella was merely a
figment of my daughter’s fevered imagination, the next question would
throw Gwendolen utterly and bring the fake reality she’d constructed
around her crashing down.
‘I want to meet her in person,’ I said. ‘I want to meet with Arabella.’
I waited, expecting my daughter’s blissful expression to collapse. But
instead, she smiled. ‘Certainly. How about three o’clock in the morning?’
I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘Three o’clock in the morning? Isn’t that a
little late for her? Or early?’
‘Arabella never sleeps,’ she said.
‘Where do I meet her?’ I asked, carefully.
‘On the cliffs above Bloater’s Cove.’
‘Then I’ll see her at three,’ I said.
‘I’ll come too.’
‘No,’ I replied, knowing it was imperative that I meet with Arabella alone
if I were to rule out my daughter’s involvement in these lethal supernatural
shenanigans. ‘This time, Gwendolen, you’re staying right here.’
I stepped back into the outer hall and slammed the door shut behind me.
Then I grabbed the key to the attic door, which I’d found in a drawer
downstairs, and swiftly locked her in.
‘No, Father!’ Gwendolen screamed from within, rattling the door from
the other side. ‘Let me out!’
She continued to yell as I activated additional deadbolts, padlocks and a
variety of locking devices I’d brought back from B&Q earlier that morning.
It was for her own good, I kept telling myself, trying my best to ignore
her. For no matter how much my conscious mind was telling me that I was
acting like a ruthless squire, a cruel patriarchal overlord of gothic lore, I had
to make sure.
Had to know whether Arabella was real or not.
Had to know if Gwendolen herself was to blame for those unexplained
mass deaths in the village.
Had to know why I, Nicholas Stein, was acting this way.
 CHAPTER EIGHT
‘The Ghost’

As the grandfather clock in the hall chimed a quarter to three, I gathered up

the lantern I’d found in the basement, extinguished the candle on my desk
and made my way out into the hall. I closed the front door gently behind
me, not wanting Gwendolen to know that I was leaving the house in case
she’d managed to find some way of springing the bolts on the attic door and
was intent on joining me in the dark to maintain the facade of Arabella
being real.
Because ultimately, I wanted to believe my daughter. As crazy as it might
sound, part of me wasn’t averse to the idea of the supernatural existing.
Both Arabella and her father were long dead, after all, and Anton’s
published works were therefore technically beyond the legal period of
copyright protection. Even if the supernatural spirit of his daughter were to
exist, hellbent on avenging itself against the theft of her father’s ancient,
unpublished work, all I need do was thrust my copy of The Writer’s Guide
to Contractual Rights and Copyright Law in its semi-transparent face and
there was nothing the paranormal brat could do about it.
Her father’s books were mine now.
Mine.
And if all went to plan this night, I need never be hungry or poor, or
married to Carlotta, or saddled with custody of our daughter, again. Why,
there were twenty completed gothic novels in all, weren’t there? All triple-
deckers, meaning I could release each volume individually and publish
sixty separate instalments if I wished. Publishing twice a year would mean
I’d be covered for the next thirty-seven and a half years. And if each was a
multi-million best-seller, I’d be rich beyond my wildest imaginings. What’s
more, I’d be famous. Hailed as the greatest name in gothic supernatural
fiction who’d ever lived. The sheer uncanny power and historical
authenticity of each Anton Mathers – excuse me, Nicholas Stein – novel
would reinvent gothic horror for the modern reader, by taking them back in
time with tales of terror so chillingly convincing that one might think they’d
been written in the very period in which they were set. Which they had
been, of course. But that was a secret I’d be taking to my grave.
I doubled up suddenly, gripping my stomach with both hands. Then my
body arced backward as I reached out, panicked, for my rear cheeks. I’d felt
movement there, I was certain of it. Something liquidous, threatening to
spill from the dank entrance of my rectal cave, poised to burst suddenly like
an exploding dam past the rocky heights of my perineum, down toward the
sleeping valley of my trousered thighs.
I turned wildly, catching a glimpse of the author’s portrait still staring at
me from the wall of my study. Perhaps the house on the hill was affecting
my mind, too? Perhaps the spirit of Anton Mathers himself, sneering
distastefully at me from that sombre portrait in my writing room, was
somehow haunting me? Perhaps he was inside my brain?
‘Whatever,’ I said, laughing off my fears. I had the man’s books now. My
future was assured, and if it turned out that he and his daughter were in
cahoots against Gwendolen and me, then I’d simply bring in a priest, or a
bulldozer, and do away with them, and this place, once and for all.
Tomorrow I’d load his entire life’s work into the boot of my car and drive
them to a secret storage vault somewhere in Stalkford. If those tomes were
going to keep me in business for the next thirty-seven and a half years, I had
to get them out of Bloater’s Cove and into a sealed unit with the correct
level of heat and humidity.
Then, once I’d managed to locate that foul doll again, I’d convince Tate
Rellington that its leaking arse was the cause of the deaths in the village,
and that the old woman they’d burned in the town square had been the
instigator of the entire problem.
Then Gwendolen and I would be safe.
Slipping outside, I made my way past the outer grounds of the house,
through the furthest edge of the graveyard, in the direction of Bloater’s
Cove.
The outcropping of trees gave way eventually to the coastline beyond,
and I was suddenly conscious that my swinging lamp might signal to some
distant rowboat offshore that the coast was clear, the revenue men were all
in the tavern and a landing could now commence. Then I remembered that I
wasn’t an eighteenth-century smuggler, but a nineteenth-century lighthouse
operator, far from my post, having strayed on the way home from some
game of cards at my local watering hole, and desperately waving my lantern
in sweeping gestures in an attempt to ward yonder schooner back, away
from the rocky shore. Then I remembered that I wasn’t that, either. I was
Nicholas Stein, dammit: gothic suspense novelist. And I was here to meet a
ghost to discuss terms regarding the sale of her father’s priceless (not that
I’d say that to her) novel collection.
My mind was swimming. Evidently, I was traversing some kind of time
warp on the cliff’s edge at Bloater’s Cove. Whatever strange and powerful
supernatural force was guiding me, I knew that I had now entered
Arabella’s psychic domain, and the usual rules of time and space no longer
applied.
So was she real then, after all? Was this strange feeling of existing in
another time and plane a part of her influence over the lives of Gwendolen
and me?
I stood there on the edge of the clifftop, staring out to sea as a powerful
wind blew in suddenly from the direction of the ocean. I felt its force buffet
me as I strained my eyes towards the shoreline, but there was no sign of
anyone below.
Was this how she would come to me, then? On the wind? Would
Arabella’s cry call to me from that storm now building above the distant
waves?
Then I smelled it. That familiar raw stink of the doll’s insides. It was
coming from somewhere below me. I knelt down on the edge of the cliff,
shifting some rocks aside in an attempt to locate it. For if Arabella’s ghost
wasn’t real, then I’d need the doll in my possession in order to convince
Tate Rellington that its toxic vapours were the sole cause of those deaths in
the village. I thrust my palm against a pile of stones, glimpsing what looked
like a piece of dirty white clothing among them, which had somehow
become caught between several of the rocks.
I tore into the mound of fragments with both hands, but as I moved the
rocks away, I saw that it was nothing of the sort. Instead, the thing looked
and felt, once I was able to touch it, like a scrap of worn paper; the page of
an old book, perhaps, long since torn and discarded from its original
binding.
I drew it out, freeing it at last from the stones. On the front of it was a
face.
 My face. Not one that had been scrawled on, or drawn in, or painted
upon, but a real human face, somehow embedded within the texture of the
parchment itself.
I coughed suddenly, reeling from the fetid stink of whatever substance
was suddenly assailing my nostrils. That reek, that pong, coming from the
odious parody of my own face. The scent of poison. The stench of death.
The stink of ink.
It was the smell of the doll.
I forced my dazed head away towards clearer air. Lurching forward, I
heaved heavily again as another violent bout of stomach cramps struck
without warning. Then found myself prostrate on the very edge of the cliff,
that familiar raw stink of the doll’s insides still lingering in my nostrils. As I
leaned forward over the side of the crag to expel my guts, I felt a pair of
small hands push me from behind.
And I fell. Downward, straight over the edge of the overhang, plunging
towards the coastline far below. I shrieked, and as I shrieked, I heard her
shriek, too. The terrifying, bloodcurdling shriek of a child’s unforgiving
fury. And as our shrieks blended together in the wind, I felt the back of my
garments snag on something jutting out from the edge of the cliff.
Immediately I sprang upward again, thankful now that I’d heaved with such
violent intensity that I’d literally untucked myself with the force of my
muscle-cramping, and the lining of my underpants had caught on the end of
a jutting twig. With help from some unknown force, whether it were
heavenly intervention or not, I had somehow been spared from death.
Bouncing up and down, suspended by my underpants from the extended
branch, I turned my head upward to see who, or what, had pushed me over
the cliff’s edge.
And saw her. A little girl, drenched from the rain, dressed in Victorian
clothes. She had long, blonde hair and a small, thin face that was strangely
beautiful.
Yet angry. Oh, so angry.
It wasn’t Gwendolen, that much I knew.
It was Arabella Mathers.
A ghost, after all.
And she hated me. Oh, how she hated me.
She really, really hated me.
 By the time I’d shot back up a third time via the spring in my over-
stretched pant-line, she’d gone.
Vanished, into the wind
Then my pant-line finally snapped and I dropped on to the sand.
 CHAPTER NINE
‘The Curse’

Halfway back to the house, I threw up and shat myself at the same time. I
thanked God I was outside. Aside from the sheer volume of liquid I’d
expelled (five buckets plus, and counting), the stuff itself was anything but
normal and would have rendered my writing study unusable if I’d
projectiled it all at home.
Damn it, I was full of ink.
Black, putrid ink.
I didn’t have to guess what came next. I knew there was no escape for me
now. I’d seen the ghost. Knew it was real. Knew that now there was no
hope of negotiating publishing rights to her father’s oeuvre. Knew that
agonising death awaited me in the form of gradually turning into a stained
paper bag.
I winced as another cramp hit my stomach. My body convulsed, and I
sprawled across the path leading back to the house.
Yet this time, nothing came out but air. I realised, with mounting horror,
that I’d spewed my last cartridge.
This was it, then. The moment of truth. By which I mean death.
Unknowingly, I’d invoked a curse when I’d handed that doll to my
daughter. Was it when I’d laid claim to the purchase as my own gift and
done that old woman out of a recognised charitable donation? Or was it
later, when I’d made the decision to steal those books penned by Arabella’s
father? Or earlier, perhaps, when I’d rented out that house on the hill in the
first place? To be honest, it didn’t really matter when. This was all simply
idle speculation, which I guess was my mind’s way of distracting me from
the knowledge that the forces of darkness would soon turn me into an ink-
stained paper bag.
Then it hit me. Gwendolen was still in the attic! And there she would
stay, I realised, waiting in vain for her father to come and rescue her, until
she died and began to rot. Frankly, it was embarrassing. No doubt, in her
mother’s eyes, I’d be to blame. My reputation would be sullied for all time,
the lawsuits with Carlotta would intensify and my book sales would start
plummeting further than they were already plummeting. I had to save
Gwendolen!
I struggled, dragging myself along the dusty path, but my cramps were
getting worse. There was no way I could get back to the house in time. Here
I would die, alone on my own garden path, drained of inky effluence and
turning rapidly into old parchment.
I rolled over, staring at the distant stars above me. Perhaps Tate
Rellington would find her, I thought, recalling that the sheriff also knew
Gwendolen was up there.
Maybe he’d rescue her.
But what if he didn’t? What if the villagers got here first? Broke into the
house in search of me and found Gwendolen up there? They’d drag my
daughter out and burn her in the village square, like they’d done to that old
crone whose appearance had so physically repelled me.
At that moment, I did something I hadn’t done since childhood. I began
to cry. And as I cried, I rolled over and curled myself up into a foetus, and
wept and wept; wishing, yearning, praying in vain for Gwendolen to be
beside me, so that I could hug her close. And so that I wouldn’t
subsequently be blamed for this whole debacle.
But it was not to be.
I was not to be.
I waited for Arabella’s curse to take hold.
And waited.
And waited a bit longer.
And a bit longer.
And continued to wait.
And, getting annoyed now, tried stretching out my limbs.
Nothing hurt.
I stretched them out again, just to make sure.
Nope, nothing was hurting.
Finally I rolled over, jubilant, scarcely believing the truth. I’d been
spared! For some unknown reason, even though I’d shat out a tankful of
ink, I’d been spared that final, dreadful, papery death.
 Leaping up from the path, I ran back to the house, raced up the stairwell
towards the attic, then raced back down again to answer the phone that was
ringing loudly in my study.
I got to the receiver just in time.
‘Hi Nicholas. It’s Rosaleen.’
Thank God! It was Rosaleen.
‘Thank goodness you’re up,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying this number for a
whole hour.’
‘I’ve had a gyppy tummy, Rosaleen,’ I said, deciding to spare her the
details. Then I changed my mind. ‘I’ve been spewing up black ink and
shitting it out the other end at the same time. I thought I was going to die.’
‘My goodness, Nicholas . . .’
‘Also, there’s a vengeful child-ghost currently exacting supernatural
revenge on the town.’
‘That’s the reason I’m calling you.’
I sat down in my chair, flummoxed. ‘You know about this?’
‘You haven’t by any chance found a stack of rare gothic novels up there,
have you, Nicholas?’
‘What do you mean by a “stack of rare gothic novels”, Rosaleen?’
‘There’s no time to play games, Nicholas. Have you found them?’
‘There is a stack of rare gothic novels up here, yes Rosaleen. But those
are mine. Technically mine. In that the period of legal copyright has lapsed,
so I’m laying claim to them as my own.’
‘Are the covers bright green, Nicholas? Is one of them called Vampton
Grange?’
How the hell did she know all this?
‘They may technically be green in hue, yes,’ I said, trying my best to
sound dismissive.
‘Then get as far away from them as possible, Nicholas. Those books are
made of arsenic!’
‘Arsenic?’ I cried, incredulously. ‘How the hell are these books made of
arsenic?’
‘Many Victorian novels were made of it, Nicholas. They used it in the
green binding of their covers. Those books you have up there are lethal to
handle. A hundred and fifty-one years ago to the day, the population of
Cresston was almost completely wiped out by a batch of arsenic-covered
books being hawked to them by a local author manufacturing them in the
grounds of his own house.’
‘A local author?’ I repeated, stunned rigid in my chair. ‘Manufacturing
them in the grounds of his own house?’
‘The illustrious Anton Mathers,’ said Rosaleen. ‘The man you asked me
to investigate. I managed to turn up some old newspapers in the local
library here. They report a mass poisoning back in 1857, in which the entire
town of Cresston were given copies of Anton Mathers’ novel, Vampton
Grange, to help teach them to read. Within twenty-four hours, everyone fell
ill and died in horrific agony, vomiting up and shitting out their insides. The
minor few who could still walk marched up to the house on the hill – your
house, Nicholas – and burned it to the ground.’
Well, that explained a lot. Though not everything. It didn’t explain the
current townsfolk shitting ink, and it also didn’t explain the existence of a
child-ghost currently wreaking supernatural revenge against all and sundry.
‘That’s not all, Nicholas . . .’ Rosaleen added.
‘Spill it,’ I roared.
‘When the authorities searched through the rubble the following morning,
they discovered the remains of two corpses lying amid the ruins. The
charred body of Anton Mathers himself, who died writing in his study . . .’
‘And the other?’ I asked, sensing what was coming.
‘His daughter. A young girl named Arabella. Her remains were found in
what was left of the garret above the house.’
I gasped. The attic! Where I’d confined Gwendolen from the moment
we’d moved in. Presumably she’d been communing with the ghost of Anton
Mathers’ daughter the entire time.
‘That’s truly chilling, Rosaleen. But to go back to these books I have
here. Is there any way we can get them fumigated this week, so that I can
start selling them under my own name by next Monday?’
‘You’re not listening, Nicholas. Anton’s daughter, Arabella . . .’
‘Yes, her again, yes . . .’ I said, impatiently.
‘She wrote his books.’
I almost dropped the phone. I hadn’t seen that one coming, even though
subsequently, of course – while writing this, for example – I knew
everything about it.
‘Go on,’ I said again, finally paying close to my full attention.
 ‘Anton Mathers was a successful gothic novelist, but the truth was that it
was his own daughter who was doing the actual writing. She was a child
genius, Nicholas. A precociously talented writer.’
‘Personally, I don’t believe in child geniuses,’ I said. ‘It’s simply a case
of rich parents.’
‘Will you listen, Nicholas? Anton confined his daughter Arabella to the
attic and kept her hidden away from view, so that no one would ever know
his books were being written by someone else. She wrote for him
prolifically, drawing upon her imposed incarceration as inspiration for her
macabre tales. When rumours of a “hidden helper” began circulating in
Anton’s former home town, he upped and moved, taking Arabella with him
in a sealed coach, to that remote coastal house – your house, Nicholas –
overlooking Bloater’s Cove. There, he began his own cottage industry,
forcing Arabella to write him numerous novels, which he then printed using
a private letterpress housed in his own basement. He had no idea the staff
below were using a highly toxic, poisonous binding.’
‘So now Arabella’s back,’ I said. ‘Furious with the town for killing her,
and also royally pissed off with her own father for imprisoning her in the
attic and using her writing to seek his own private fame and fortune. Intent
on pursuing her ghostly vengeance against all who’ve crossed her, including
their descendants. And she’s using my own daughter Gwendolen as some
sort of supernatural conduit in order to exact her revenge. What a sod.’
‘And because of those deaths, all copies of Anton Mathers’ books were
destroyed, and his name erased from the history books, apart from a certain
microfilm reader in a local library quite near me. Arabella’s work has been
destroyed, Nicholas, until now. But your decision to pass off her works as
your own is now fuelling that devilish rage inside her. You must get out of
that house, Nicholas. Take Gwendolen with you and flee Bloater’s Cove
tonight!’
‘Sure, Rosaleen. Ta for all the info. You did great. Can you now see if
there’s a quick and easy way to de-poison a large batch of arsenic-laced
books? Arabella’s novels are going to make me a multi-millionaire – and
possibly you, too, if you play your cards right.’
‘Nicholas! Listen to me!’
I slammed the phone down, aware I now had a mountain of things to do
if I was somehow going to get Arabella Mathers’ books into print by the
end of summer while battling her wrathful spirit.
 First, I had to check Gwendolen hadn’t also been partly destroyed by
Arabella’s vengeful ghost, and if she was still compos mentis, I should
probably also take her up some food and empty the slop bucket, which
hadn’t been sluiced since last week.
Bounding up the staircase again with a lighted candle, I knocked loudly
on Gwendolen’s door.
‘Daddy!’ she yelled.
Thank God, I thought. No ‘Father’ this time. Hopefully, the old
Gwendolen was back.
‘Help me, Daddy! Please! Help me, Daddy! Please! Help me . . .’
Then I realised it wasn’t the voice of Gwendolen at all, but instead the
automated tinny whine of that horrendous Victorian doll I’d gifted her.
I held out my candle and saw it perched there on the door handle, directly
in front of me.
Crying out in horror, I slapped my hand at the toy, knocking it sideways
on to the floor. Then I swept round, searching for it in the shadows, and
spied it lying on the floorboards, arms and legs kicking back and forth as it
continued to cry.
‘Help me, Daddy! Please! Help me, Daddy! Please! Help me . . .’
The voice sputtered, dying gradually as its motorised limbs began to
slow. When all movement had ceased, a flood of black ink rushed out from
its tinned behind, staining the floor below. Disgusted, I ran at it full pelt and
kicked the thing with all my strength. It flew at speed down the length of
the corridor, straight through a window at the far end. I waited for a
moment, then heard it smash to pieces on the ground outside. Tomorrow, I’d
build a bonfire and burn the remains.
Turning back round, I flung open Gwendolen’s door. She was sitting
there on the bed, completely motionless, as if stuck in a trance.
‘Gwendolen,’ I said. ‘It’s me. It’s Daddy.’
There was no response. I walked over to the bed, knelt down before her
and looked directly into her eyes.
There was no one at home.
‘Gwendolen, please,’ I said, hugging her close to me. It was like cuddling
a block of not-remotely-melting ice. I leaned my ear against her chest, and
breathed a sigh of relief. At least this block of not-remotely-melting ice was
still breathing.
 ‘I’m going to save you, Gwendolen,’ I said. ‘I know I’ve been a bad dad,
but I know why now. I was possessed by the dark spirit of Anton Mathers.
But I’m over it now. His ghost no longer has a supernatural hold over me. I
have him completely sussed, frankly. But you need to shake off Arabella,
Gwen. Cast her out. Tell her to sod off so we can go back to Stalkford and
make a fortune out of her unsold books.’
Gwendolen said nothing. Nothing at all.
She was still possessed.
But I couldn’t just leave her here and be hugely successful without her.
At some point further down the line, the authorities would discover her and
I’d no doubt be liable for any alleged ‘damages’ plus her unpaid rent.
Maybe if I could find a priest in the village, they might be able to exorcise
the ghost currently employing my daughter as a psychic conduit.
But was there really going to be a Christian place of worship in a
backward rural community like Cresston, where the entire population was a
bunch of illiterate pagans? I’d probably have to drive all the way back to
Stalkford in order to locate a priest at this hour, and by the time I got back,
Gwendolen’s soul might well have been completely damned.
How could I release my daughter’s soul from the clutches of this
paranormal entity by sunrise, I wondered? I supposed I could simply pop
her in the car with me and drive us both back to Stalkford, but then I needed
Gwendolen to carry all those boxes of books out to the boot as well. And I
had no guarantee that Arabella would accept my terms regarding that
elapsed period of legal copyright and allow my daughter to leave town
unhaunted.
I had no other choice. Madness, and an eternity spent in the fiery
torments of some private supernatural hell, would be all that awaited my
own darling daughter if I didn’t do something.
‘I’m coming back for you, Gwen,’ I said. ‘I promise. I’m going to see if I
can somehow appeal to the villagers. Now that I know the truth about
Anton Mathers, and have seen the ghost of Arabella for myself, maybe I
can persuade them to come back with us to Stalkford to find a priest. That
way, one of them can also help you carry all those books out to the car.
‘Then we’ll finally exorcise that ghost child inside your head and start
selling those books once they’ve been fully sanitised. Published under my
name, this time. Not Arabella Mathers, nor Anton Mathers. Their spirits can
die here with this house. The future is mine now, Gwen. And yours. Me as a
best-selling, multi-million-earning gothic novelist, and you as my
beleaguered assistant.’
I leaned forward to kiss my little girl on the forehead, but never made it.
For at that precise moment, Gwendolen turned away from me and curled up
on the bed, her face turned to the wall.
At any other time, I might have yelled at her for being insolent. But this
time, I didn’t. This time, I paused, shocked at this final act of rejection. I
fought back tears. I’d lost her, then. Somehow, despite all I’d done for her,
I’d lost my only daughter.
‘I’ll be back, Gwen,’ I said. ‘I promise. And finally, we’ll be happy
together.’
I turned suddenly towards the window, sensing a faint glow coming from
the direction of Cresston.
Then heard the chanting.
I walked over to Gwendolen’s window and saw, moving through the
trees, a long line of flaming torches.
The villagers . . .
The rabble were heading this way, I realised. Marching and shouting
through the dark forest below. Making their way in a ragged line through
the trees, in the direction of this house.
They were coming to kill us.
 CHAPTER TEN
‘The Sacrifice’

I couldn’t decide what was alarming me more. The thought that Gwendolen
and I might be burned alive inside this house on the hill, or the realisation
that alongside us, those precious books of Arabella’s would also burn. For
although they had been stored in those metal boxes in the basement for over
a century and had been well protected from that devastating fire that had
occurred exactly 151 years ago to the day, I, in my eagerness to count and
sort the potential goldmine I’d been literally sitting on for the last few days,
had spent most of the day moving them all into my writing study in
preparation for Gwendolen carrying them out to the car.
If those villagers heading our way set fire to the house this very night, all
of those novels would go up in smoke, and my life and reputation would
vanish, too, in the flames.
Maybe I could appeal to their better nature, as I’d mentioned to
Gwendolen just now. Perhaps I could persuade them to leave the house
itself intact. Distract them, if need be, by leading them away from the
building in pursuit of me. That way, they would also fail to learn of the
existence of Gwendolen, and she’d be saved, also.
But I’d need to act fast if I was going to create a diversion.
Locking Gwendolen in behind me, for her own protection, I raced down
the stairs again, aware that the chanting villagers were getting closer all the
time. I could almost smell the smoke from their torches.
I thrust open the front door, leaped over the wooden porch and ran
towards my waiting Jensen Interceptor.
I got inside and gunned the engine. With the mob this close, it was vital
they could hear me attempting to flee the place, in order to divert their
attention away from the house itself. If I could lead them to an area some
distance away, I could conduct negotiations without fear of my books, or
Gwendolen, being damaged.
 As I keyed the ignition, slammed the vehicle into gear and headed off in
the direction of the wooded lane running past the entrance of our driveway,
I prayed that Arabella wouldn’t make an appearance and disrupt my plans. I
hoped she’d be more inclined to help me at present, knowing that the
alternative meant that her books would forever be destroyed in another
devastating fire.
After all, I’d been spared previously from being turned into a paper bag,
which I assumed was due to Arabella feeling a sense of temporary relief at
the thought of her own father’s imminent punishment. Me stealing the
novels of Anton Mathers seemed fitting retribution for him having stolen
those self-same novels from Arabella. But there was no guarantee I’d be
spared a second time, given I still had every intention of publishing those
books under my own name once they’d been fumigated.
I pulled out of our driveway into the wooded lane and gunned it along the
neighbouring road. The trees ahead appeared to reach towards me through
the beams of my headlamps, as if they were somehow alive. Again, I’d have
noted that particular detail down if I was still planning on writing my own
gothic novel, but as I wasn’t, and as time was of the essence, I let the creepy
observation go and concentrated instead on putting as much distance as I
could between myself and the house.
From the flurry of movement I spied in the trees to my left, and the
frantic rush of burning flames between the branches, I realised my plan was
working. I was dragging the baying mob away from the house.
I continued to drive in the direction of Cresston, knowing that the
Interceptor could easily outrun them all if I wanted it to.
But Cresston offered me no safety, I knew, and if I were to succeed in
appealing to the mob’s sense of goodwill, I’d need to engineer some way of
winning them over.
When I was far enough along the lane to have drawn them a sufficiently
safe distance from the house, I slowed the Interceptor and came to a stop.
I’d considered driving the car into a tree to make it look as if I’d suffered
some catastrophic accident, but there was no way I was going to sacrifice
my only means of eventually making it back to Stalkford – and parts for
Interceptors were becoming increasingly hard to source, in any case.
So I decided to stage a breakdown instead. Propping the car’s bonnet
upward, leaving the headlights on so that I might easily be found, I set
about gathering up as many clumps of cress that I could find. The plant
grew in abundance around the outskirts of Cresston.
Having accrued as much as I could, and aware that the glow from the
torches and the mob of villagers holding them were getting closer all the
time, I tied the small plants together in a charming bouquet and arranged
them on the rear seat of the Interceptor. Then I tore a page from my notepad
and, remembering not to write anything as offensive as a word, drew the
picture of a ‘thumbs-up’, alongside that of a smiley face, and lay it on top of
the cress.
Hearing voices coming from the distant trees, I moved round to the front
of the car and angled my head over its engine, feigning confusion.
‘There he is!’ cried one of the villagers, bursting into view as a huge mob
of them descended into the lane from the surrounding trees. They were
holding what looked to me like wads of coarse hessian rolled into tubes and
soaked in wax, with a wooden handle and a cardboard collar attached to
deflect any wax droplets. Flaming torches, in other words.FN35
I looked up at them, my face masked in an expression of sudden panic,
and held up my hands in apparent supplication.
‘Has anyone got a visual Haynes manual for a Jensen Interceptor?’ I
asked.
‘Kill him!’ cried another one of the villagers. ‘Burn the witch!’
‘Witch?’ I cried out, incredulous. ‘I’m anything but.’
‘No, you’re a writer!’ screamed another. ‘Even worse!’
‘Burn him!’
‘Burn him to death!’
‘Look,’ I said, trying to appear as innocent as I could. My whole plan
hinged on this next moment. ‘I’ve brought you all a peace offering. A
bouquet of cress, specially picked for your community. I want to work for
you guys, you see, as an apprentice cress-gatherer. I’m done with books.
I’m just into cress now.’
‘Except that you’ve picked the bad cress,’ said an old woman, staring in
through the car’s rear window. ‘Not the good cress.’
‘What do you mean, the bad cress?’
‘Bad cress grows on curséd ground. Like this very lane leading towards
that there house on the hill up ahead. We only eat good cress. Cress from
Cresston. But this is bad cress.’
 ‘Okay, forget that,’ I said. ‘I really just wanted to talk to you guys about
the ghost.’
‘Burn him!’
‘Wait!’ I said, aware that they were gathering closer about me. ‘I know
all about the ghost that’s been killing people in the town. It’s the ghost of a
little girl who was found burned to death in my attic, one hundred and fifty-
one years ago to the day.’
‘Your attic!’ one of them yelled.
‘My attic, yes, but it wasn’t mine then. Now I understand that no one
likes a ghost exacting supernatural revenge, but in order to exorcise her
spirit, we do need to find a priest.’
‘Priest?’ shrieked another one of the mob. ‘A believer in the Holy
“Word”?’
‘Word! Word!’ someone screamed.
‘Look, you’re gonna have to employ words at a basic level if you want
this ghost dealt with.’
‘Kill him!’
‘Let me drive into Stalkford,’ I said, starting to panic. ‘I’ll deal with the
priest – you won’t have to look at any words, I’ll do all of that. Then I’ll
drive him back up here and Bob’s your uncle, you can all go back to your
cress. Now if you’d just move out of my path, I’ll head off straight away.’
No one moved.
‘I thought you said your car had broken down?’ said the leader of the
mob, stepping closer. ‘And yet now you’re talking about heading off
“straight away” . . .’
‘He’s lying!’ shouted another.
‘Obviously, I’ll need to fix it first, yes,’ I said, trying to rectify my
mistake, but they had seen through my subterfuge.
‘Burn the liar!’
‘No, wait!’ I said as a group of arms reached out as one to grab me. ‘If I
don’t get a priest to exorcise that ghost, you’ll all be dead!’
‘You summoned her, witch!’ yelled the woman who’d been staring warily
at my bouquet of cress. ‘You brought the curse upon us. Burn the writer!’
‘Burn the witch!’ cried another.
‘Burn him at the stake!’
They dragged me from the car, up on to the verge and through
the line of trees. I felt my body snag on twigs and branches as
they tore me across the massed bracken towards a small clearing
ahead.
There, in the centre of the small opening, stood a blasted tree, long dead.
The leader of the mob gave a signal to his followers, and at once they
dragged me over to it and tied me to its greying, withered trunk.
‘Burn him!’
This was it, then. I’d escaped being turned into a paper bag, but now an
even worse fate awaited. I was about to suffer the ultimate indignity of
suffering a fire-based public execution while being jeered at by a baying
mob.
And again, I knew that Gwendolen would be left up there in that distant
attic room, alone and afraid, expecting her father to come and rescue her at
any moment, before realising, eventually, that he wasn’t coming after all.
Then she’d slowly start to believe that I’d abandoned her for good.
Scarpered from my responsibilities in the middle of the night, pretending
that I’d be back for her, when all along my sole intention had been to escape
by myself, never to return.
I had to get back to her! If only to prove her completely wrong about that.
Show her that she was being unfair in condemning me in such a fashion.
But it was useless. There was no chance now. My hands had been secured
around a blasted trunk, ripe for burning. Leaves had been piled around my
waist, and someone had gone to the trouble of tying a crown of cress around
my hair, made out of all that bad cress I’d picked. I watched as the leader of
the mob reached out towards the gathered kindling below me with his
flaming torch.
‘This is bullshit,’ I said, and prepared to die . . .
Then I heard gunshots.
A huge cry rose from the assembled villagers as the bulky frame of Tate
Rellington strode like a Tombstone marshal from the nearby trees. He
aimed his gun at the leader of the mob.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he said.
Thank God. A miracle. Tate Rellington was here, and in the nick of time,
like the proverbial cavalry – which, because of Rellington’s Western
leanings, somehow fitted his nature, and thus his fortuitous appearance here
didn’t feel remotely forced or unlikely in any way at all.
I watched, ecstatic, as the lawman pistol-whipped the leader of the mob,
then swung his gun around to cover the remaining villagers.
 ‘You darned idiots wait for me in future, d’ya hear?’
‘Yes, sheriff,’ they said as one, as though he were a religious leader.
And he was, in a way, I realised, as the horror of my predicament slowly
dawned.
Tate Rellington was their leader.
‘This writer’s mine,’ he said, aiming the gun at me now. What the hell
was going on here? I thought Rellington was my friend. Hadn’t he sworn to
protect me? Advised me on securing the house against unruly mobs? Hadn’t
he promised to protect my safety, and especially that of my daughter?
A rush of cold fear ran through me. Gwendolen. Rellington knew about
Gwendolen! He’d sworn to protect her from the baying mob now
surrounding me. The mob I’d cleverly led away from the house, specifically
to protect her (and the books, obviously). But if Rellington knew about
Gwendolen, and Rellington was on their side . . .
‘He’s got a daughter,’ said the sheriff, and I knew then that it was all over
for her. And for us.
‘Keeps her in the attic of that there house on the hill. She’s the one you
want,’ he said, pointing with his pistol in the direction of the hill
overlooking Bloater’s Cove. ‘She’s the witch who’s doing all the killing.’
The mob roared loudly in fear and rage.
‘Burn her!’ they screamed in unison. ‘Burn the witch!’
‘Go do it!’ barked Rellington. ‘Go burn that whole durned house down!’
Another roar went up from the mob as they tore free of the clearing and
raced once more into the trees, flames lighting their path through the
woodland in the direction of the house, and my precious daughter
imprisoned inside.
‘You murderer!’ I cried at Rellington. ‘Why are you burning down my
house? My daughter’s in there. And all my books.’
He stared at me, his face filled with a hitherto concealed contempt. ‘If I
cain’t have that there house on the hill, stranger, no one can,’ he spat.
A sudden thought ran through my mind. That lone bidder the estate agent
had told me about. Rellington had said it had in fact been the entire town
bidding against me. Had it been a lone bidder, after all?
‘That’s right,’ said Rellington, as if reading my mind. ‘I was the one
bidding ’gainst you, Mr Stein. I wanted that there house on the hill for those
summer months. But a lawman’s wage don’t quite cover a coastal retreat
these days, leastways when the rival bidder in question pulls a durned rabbit
out the bag and finds hisself an extra twenty dollars. That swayed the deal
in your favour, stranger. I had to go back to my little shack in Cresston
again, all the while knowing you, a writer, were sipping beers and
cahooting away up there, jes’ waiting to bring the whole durned town down
around ya by invoking that there curse.’
‘So you were trying to hire out that house to protect the town?’ I found
that hard to believe.
‘That’s what I’ll tell them, leastways,’ said Rellington. ‘Truth is, I knew
them books was up there, too. See, I’ve always fancied myself as a writer,
too. I’m an avid reader of them supernatural gothics you pen, and, believe it
or not, I have a durned good understanding of the genre.’
Of course, I recalled. Rellington had known who I was, and the kinds of
books I wrote, from the very start. Why, he’d even mentioned it specifically
at one point. Suddenly, it all made sense. How the hell hadn’t I figured it
out before now? That note . . . the one pinned to that dead cat on the day
Gwendolen and I first arrived. It contained words. No villager would have
written those down. These people never used words under any
circumstances. Meaning that note could only have been written by someone
who did use words. A reader, say, of numerous gothic potboilers...
‘Now that you’ve found them,’ continued Rellington, ‘I guess you’ve had
the same idea as me, and figure to publish them there books under your own
durned name. But if I can’t have ’em, Mr Stein, I’m sure as hell you won’t,
either.’ He cocked his pistol and aimed it at my head.
‘But my daughter,’ I said, weakly, trying to appeal to what little sense of
humanity he might yet retain. ‘She’s all alone up there.’
‘And when she dies,’ said Rellington, ‘that there ghost will die, too.
Seeing as your daughter’s the durned conduit. Am I right?’
I didn’t have to answer. He was right. If Gwendolen died, the spirit of
Arabella would no doubt die with her, along with everything else in that
house on the hill.
It was over, then. I’d failed. Not just as a writer, but as a father, too.
There was no longer any hope. I’d failed Gwendolen.
‘Say your prayers,’ said Rellington, aiming the gun at my head.
Then he pulled the trigger.
 CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘The Demon’

The bullet passed straight through me.

‘What the hell?’ said Rellington, opening fire again.
I heard something like a thwipping sound as the rounds tore straight
through my head, embedding themselves in the wooden trunk behind.
Then Rellington began to scream.
I felt a loosening in the bonds around my wrists. Shards of the dead tree
behind me had evidently exploded outward from the sheer force of the
bullet’s impact, striking the ropes binding my hands, severing the cords.
I pulled my wrists free, reached upward and felt my face.
It was paper.
It couldn’t be, I thought, feeling around my head with both hands now.
But it was paper. Leathery paper. My head was a paper bag. Perhaps not
completely paper at the moment. After all, I was still sentient, and could see
and breathe, and speak, yet the transformation I’d been dreading had now
begun, and Arabella’s curse was finally taking its full effect.
‘Stay away from me!’ yelled Rellington, opening fire again. The bullets
passed through my face once more, leaving ragged holes in their wake. But
I felt no pain at all. Discerned no real difference in my essential ability to
function.
Which meant I had still that most precious of gifts.
Time.
Raising both hands above my head, I ran at Rellington like a wailing
ghoul, shrieking as I did so. He threw himself aside, yelling out in terror
and firing blindly in my direction. But I was free of him at last.
Turning, I threw myself into the trees surrounding us, and ran as fast as I
could through the woods towards the house on the hill.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before Rellington gathered his wits again and
set out after me. I had to get there before him. Had to stop that rowdy mob
from torching my home, my books, but most importantly – my daughter.
As I fought my way forward through the trees, I felt the ground rise
under me, and knew that I was finally ascending the hill leading up to the
house. But as I approached the crest and saw a break in the line of trees up
ahead, I caught sight of a huge wall of flame.
I was too late! The mob had already set fire to the building. With an
agonised wail, I clambered forward towards the rising flames. I could see
the round tower jutting upward through the high branches, not yet alight,
and cursed myself that I hadn’t given Gwendolen that particular room when
I’d had the chance. If I had done, she might be alive at this very moment.
Might never even have suffered the initial nightmare that precipitated these
subsequent events. Wouldn’t now be encased within a darkened attic as
flames licked rapidly around the wooden edges of the house that was her
prison.
As I approached, I saw the trees closest to the building swaying wildly
against a strong breeze whipping in from the ocean beyond Bloater’s Cove.
I hoped, I prayed, that the wind might blow the encroaching flames away
from the house, perhaps even extinguish them entirely. Yet that was a futile
wish – that wild wind coming in from the east would no doubt fan those
flames, not dampen them. For a dampening to happen, I needed rain to be
blowing in, not wind, and right now it wasn’t remotely raining. Not even
spitting, I noted, cursing as I staggered ever onwards. Then again, rain
might have softened the paper bag that was now my head, meaning I’d go
all mushy in an instant and not be able to do anything constructive to help
Gwendolen, so I guess it was swings and roundabouts.
I moved rapidly forward through the flame-lit woodland, tripping over a
branch lying on the ground before me. As I gathered myself together again,
I heard a gunshot crack out behind me and realised it was Tate Rellington
once more, in full control of his faculties again and in fast pursuit.
Onward I ran.
I staggered beneath a group of overhanging branches, aware that I was
approaching the house from the side opposite the family graveyard. I was
breathless and exhausted now, my face drawing inward and outward like an
inflated crisp packet as I fought desperately for breath. At last I managed to
break through the clearing ahead of me and finally caught sight of the
house.
 It was intact. In fact, it wasn’t even remotely ablaze. I turned my head
aside to ascertain where the flames I’d seen were coming from, and that’s
when I saw it.
The villagers were alight. Not the house. Something had gotten to them
before they’d had a chance to reach the building. And from the number of
flaming locals currently shitting out cress and ink from exposed orifices, I
had a good idea what that something was.
‘Behold!’ yelled a voice behind me, as a large figure stormed past in the
direction of the ignited mob. It was Tate Rellington again.
‘There!’ he yelled, waving his gun. ‘There’s the witch! She walks among
us!’
Then I saw her.
She wasn’t walking, though, I noted. She was floating instead, levitating
between the house and the incinerated throng, her white dress billowing in
the wind as her terrible, unblinking eyes pierced the darkness around us
with that cold, deathly stare.
Arabella’s ghost.
I followed her line of sight and glimpsed three villagers cowering behind
a nearby bush, not yet aflame but holding in their hands those burning
torches from the village, which they’d no doubt intended to use against the
wooden boards of the house.
Before they knew what was happening, Arabella raised one arm in their
direction and pointed. Instantly, all three keeled over as one, convulsing
wildly as jets of black ink shot forth from their mouths and arses, tearing
great holes in their cotton trousers. Then, as the black pools of ink spread
outward from below them, their faces began to change drastically. At first
they became drawn, almost skull-like, as fear transformed their features into
quaking masks of terror. Then an untidy network of lines spread lengthways
across their skin, creeping slowly in jagged trails as if their heads were
cracking like weakening eggs. Then I saw these lines were creases, and the
heads I’d been looking at now resembled nothing more than flapping bags.
I reached up with one hand to my own face, relieved that somehow I was
still able to function as part-man, part-bag, the supernatural process for
some reason taking longer with me than it did with those others. I dare say
part of me was being spared again. Maybe it was because I was a man of
letters, unlike these illiterate heathens, and my veneration of the printed
word had, for now, granted me additional time as a sentient, intelligent
human being.
As I continued to watch, the flaming torches they’d once clutched – in
arms that now resembled toilet roll tubes – caught suddenly on their paper
fingers, igniting them like a lit match striking a box of cheap fireworks.
Then they burst into flame, the inky effluence under their burning feet
boiling instantly.FN36 As they ran about in a mad panic, Arabella’s ghost
turned her attention to another group of huddling illiterates.
Realising that the vengeful spirit was temporarily distracted, I dived
forward across the ground, rolling up against the nearest wall of the house. I
lay there in the shadows, praying that Arabella hadn’t seen me. If I could
slowly make my way round to the front of the building while the remaining
villagers fought in vain to escape the fate I knew awaited them, maybe I
could sneak into the house unseen and rescue Gwendolen before Arabella
had a chance to turn on me.
I watched, biding my time, as the leader of the mob, the one who’d
grabbed me from the bonnet of my Jensen Interceptor, held out the village
hoe to ward off the evil spirit, thrusting it wildly at the floating Arabella.
Ink suddenly burst from the end of its wooden shaft as Arabella glared
malevolently at the gardening implement. Then the leader of the mob
dropped the tool abruptly and lurched forwards, expelling a long jet of
black liquid from his throat. As he did so, the lower hem of the hessian sack
he was wearing whipped upwards as an identical arc of spraying effluence
exploded from his rear end. I turned my face away from the horrifying
sight, unable to watch what I knew would come next.
As the leader’s head and body turned rapidly into paper, the flames from
his ignited torch blew against his wilting frame, setting it alight. Two of the
villagers dashed forward in an effort to assist their fallen leader, then turned
about, shrieking, realising it was useless. As they ran desperately for the
woods they’d just left, various ends of their own bodies exploded with ink.
None of them would make it, I realised. One after the other, each afflicted
villager underwent a sudden, horrifying body purge, collapsing on to the
ground in a mess of ink, their emerging paper heads erupting into sudden
flame as the torches they were holding in their withering hands suddenly
ignited them.
Then I saw Tate Rellington again. Realising the severity of his
predicament, he’d flung himself behind a nearby tree and was currently
hugging the trunk hard. As I watched, he turned and hurled his own flaming
torch far away, into the distance, aware that a fiery death was inevitable
were he to remain holding it when Arabella struck.
‘Lose the flames!’ he yelled out hoarsely to the others, but in the chaos
his cries were drowned out by the agonised screams of the dead and dying.
Mainly the dying, though.
I crawled further around the exterior of the house, manoeuvring myself
closer to the front porch, hugging my own body close to the wall in the
hope that I’d remain hidden from Arabella. Meanwhile, Rellington drew his
gun once more from the holster on his hip and fired off several shots in the
direction of the ghost.
They went right through her, slamming into the planks of the house
behind, inches from my own head. I wanted to cry out and warn Rellington
to shoot higher. Tell him Arabella’s ghost was impervious to bullets and that
he was close to drilling me, instead. Then I remembered I was part paper
and didn’t need to bother, having already been drilled several times. Also, if
I had cried out, Arabella might have turned on me instead, and then I’d
potentially be suffering another, perhaps fatal, bout of supernatural
dysentery.
Rellington fired again, emptying the entire barrel in my direction. I hit
the dirt, instinctively (though again, it wasn’t technically necessary). Not
easy, as I’d hit the dirt once already and there was technically less dirt there
for my body to hit.
Splinters of exploding wood rained down upon me, propelled by the
impact of Rellington’s bullets; peppering my paper face with wooden shards
(which, again, didn’t hurt).
I fought my instinct to holler out, remembering that if I shouted anything
out now, my arse was proverbial grass as far as Arabella’s ghost was
concerned.
Then came a brief moment of silence as Rellington reloaded his pistol,
during which Arabella’s ghost turned her attention to the remaining
villagers, splattering their insides over the driveway before their paper-like
remains caught on the flaming torches still clutched in their hands, erupting
them into their very own makeshift funeral pyre.
I looked up again at the exact same moment that Rellington leaned round
from the side of the tree and snapped off two more rounds in my direction.
 I felt a sharp sting in my shoulder as the bullet struck me, pinning me
temporarily to the wall. I gasped in horror. Of course! Only my head was
part paper at the moment. The affliction hadn’t yet affected my arms and
legs. Meaning those were still viable targets!
I stifled an agonised scream, then reached up and clawed my embedded
flesh from the splintered plank. As I began to ooze blood, I felt my body-
strength weakening, realising that if I was to stand any chance of rescuing
Gwendolen, I had to make my move now.
Steeling myself, I reached out with my good arm and clawed my way
across the ground, hoping that the sound of burning villagers and echoing
gunfire might mask my desperate clamber towards the front porch of the
house.
But as I came out of hiding, so too did Rellington. Rolling wildly to the
left, away from the safety of his tree trunk, he fired off another volley of
rounds at the ghost, then leaped to his feet and ran straight at her, gun
blazing.
I watched as Arabella floated perfectly still, the bullets passing right
through her dress, slamming once again into the wall behind me, causing
me to abandon my advance towards the front door.
I froze, aware that Rellington’s last-ditch, desperate effort to overcome
the ghost by force was a futile effort.
I stared, almost detached, as the sheriff froze mid-run, then dropped his
empty gun, grabbing desperately at his gut.
‘You durned hellion,’ he cried, then belched out a wide spray of black
fluid. I shielded myself from the inky mist as the lawman rolled over
suddenly, his hands clutching in a fevered panic at the seat of his trousers.
‘There’s a law against this, young lady,’ he yelled, as his rearside trouser
seam ripped loudly apart and a powerful arc of expelled butt-ink erupted
into the sky like an exploding geyser.
I turned away, horrified at the sight, trying to keep my mind on the task at
hand, but as I dragged myself forward through the dust, pulling myself on
to the porch as quietly as I could, there was suddenly an almighty scream
from behind.
‘Now cometh the vengeance of Arabella,’ cried a young voice, and
immediately I knew it was the ghost itself speaking. ‘Now Bloater’s Cove
will feel the true wrath of Arabella Mathers.’
 Almost at the door now, I turned around one last time. I didn’t do it to see
if there was anything I could do for Rellington. As far as I was concerned,
his time was up. After all, he’d been the one who’d wanted to flame
Gwendolen, thinking she was responsible for Arabella coming back to life
(which, admittedly, as psychic conduit, she was). So why the hell should I
cry tears for some two-bit lawman from a backwater town who’d just
winged my precious writing arm?
No, I turned to watch him burn.
But I was too late. He’d already gone up in smoke, ignited by the spark
from his gun as it dropped from his hand and struck the ground below him,
catching in that same moment a hitherto unknown and highly flammable
component in the ink itself. And if I thought I’d been blessed with a brief
second to relish that sight while Arabella’s back was turned, I was wrong
about that, too.
Because Arabella had turned around also. Turned around so far that she
was now facing me. And suddenly I realised that those words she’d uttered
– those dark, terrifying warnings of an imminent and mighty storm of
supernatural vengeance – hadn’t been aimed at Tate Rellington at all.
They were aimed at me.
 CHAPTER TWELVE
‘The Burning’

I felt my stomach churn again. I fought to remain calm, feeling my

intestines bubbling within. I knew that at any moment, I’d start expelling
my former solids once more from both ends. And given that I was now part
paper bag, I didn’t relish the thought of becoming engulfed in flames as my
particulars caught on a nearby naked flame. I reckoned I had about five
seconds to even the odds.
‘Look, Arabella,’ I said. ‘I can call you that, right?’
‘Die!’ she shrieked. I detected a vague trace of High Demon in her
accent.
‘Whoa, hold your horses, young lady,’ I said, holding up my good hand,
which I could see was now also turning into paper. I fought to control its
increased flapping as I sought to distract her with the business proposal I’d
been working on.
‘What say I publish those books of yours under your own name?’
The ghost of Arabella paused for a moment, floating in mid-air. Finally, I
had her attention.
‘Now, I have contacts in the publishing and pharmaceutical industry who
can get volume one up and running in no time, with no ill effects for the
reader. All I want in return is for my daughter Gwendolen and I to walk free
from here, plus twenty-five per cent of the profits and either an “additional
material by” or equivalent co-writing credit. Ideally, I’d want to claim the
bulk of the writing as my own work and give you a standard “storyline by”
credit, but I guess you’re not quite in the bargaining mood, right?’
I felt ink swishing in my rear end, preparing to let itself rip.
‘Okay!’ I yelled. ‘I’ll settle for an “as told to”. You can’t say fairer than
that.’
My body spun round in a full circle. I felt like everything was about to
come out at once. ‘Fine!’ I pleaded, in a shrill voice I didn’t even know I
was capable of producing. ‘You may have full credit.’
I feigned tears, hoping my visibly sorry state would go some way
towards convincing this child-ghost of my good intentions. In truth, I
simply planned to claim ‘Arabella Mathers’ as another pseudonym of mine,
and if this supernatural child-ghost reared her head again at some future
date, I would simply renegotiate terms once Gwendolen had been stored
safely away in a local place of worship.
If all else failed, I figured I’d make millions anyway on a best-selling
‘true life’ paranormal exposé revealing the ‘truth’ behind the cursed books,
publishing it either as Terror in Bloater’s Cove or The Cresstonville Horror,
depending on the sales market.
But it was not to be. The ghost of Arabella simply raised her arm, pointed
at me menacingly, and hurled a particularly malevolent look in my
direction. I turned from her gaze, shaking my head. How she expected to
maintain a professional career in publishing with an attitude like that was
beyond me.
Yet before I could alert her to her lack of fundamental business etiquette,
Arabella shot me yet another menacing glance and I cried out in fright as
two powerful jets of ink burst forth from my ends.
And there was me thinking I’d expelled my last cartridge an hour or so
back. Evidently I was still brim-full of the stuff.
But that was okay. I’d been here already, hadn’t I? I could handle this
particular horror. What I couldn’t handle, as I said before, was what would
come next. If I’d been perched over the edge of a toilet bowl, I might have
gripped on to the rim for dear life, sucked up my physical convulsions,
knowing that in a minute or so the heaves would subside, and I could start
thinking about what I might have in the house for breakfast next day that
wouldn’t immediately instigate a runnier bout.
But there was no antiemetic for the supernatural, I feared. If I was to
avoid the inevitable, turning it somehow into the evitable, then I had to do it
while navigating my double-ended spew.
I looked around, desperate to find some way of combating this vindictive,
vengeful and frankly unreasonable ghost of a dead Victorian child
condemned to a fiery death 151 years ago to the day, who now wanted to set
the entire town alight and wipe everyone in Bloater’s Cove and Cresston off
the face of the map of Stalkford reprinted in the front of this book.
‘Daddy, help me! Please! Daddy, help me, Please!’
 I heard Gwendolen’s voice. But how could I help her? How could I help
my poor, incarcerated daughter when all around me was a roaring ocean of
Victorian ink issuing forth from both my outermost and innermost orifices?
It was all I could do to try and avoid aiming my projected fluids at those
encroaching flames for fear of igniting that almost-hitherto-unknown
flammable agent in them.
But then I realised the voice was coming from somewhere close by. Not
from the attic, after all . . .
Then I remembered. That voice. The vaguely tinny quality . . . It was the
doll!
Of course! I’d kicked it through the window in the hallway outside the
attic door, hadn’t I? Then presumably it must be around here, somewhere.
I rolled over, still trying to direct my arse and mouth geysers away from
the naked flames, aware that all the time Arabella was following me with
her eyes, waiting to inflict the final indignity and turn me fully into paper. I
realised now why the transformation had been part-delayed in my case.
Arabella hadn’t given me special treatment for being a writer, after all. No,
the effect on me was delayed because she was simply toying with me.
Prolonging my agony like a cat flicking the protruding intestines of a
lacerated mouse.
Soon, I’d be nothing but paper. Then I’d catch fire and incinerate
completely before the taunting aspect of this terrifying, transparent
Arabella.
Then I saw it, lying there on the ground nearby, where it had struck the
roof of the porch on its descent from the attic floor window and had been
flung sideways, landing on the ground just three feet away.
Its motorised legs and arms were still kicking out wildly in a futile
march, another stream of ink flowing from underneath it as the metal voice-
box inside it continued to wail.
‘Help me, Daddy! Please! Help me, Daddy! Please!’
A look of grim determination now set upon my face, even though I
couldn’t technically see that myself, and anyone watching would probably
have only been able to take in the seemingly endless torrent of ink-based
fountains coming from my extremities. But I could feel the grim
determination on my face – which, admittedly, was still largely paper.
Mustering what strength remained in me, I reached out for the small doll
unexpectedly with my wounded arm. This unanticipated movement gained
me that vital element of surprise, and in seconds, I was clutching the toy in
my hand.
I heard a sudden shriek from behind. As I turned back round, I saw a new
expression on Arabella’s unnerving, uncanny visage.
Fear.
Fear of what I, Nicholas Stein, might now do to it.
Then I sensed what that it might be. As my jets of ink spewed closer to
the surrounding flames, they were suddenly switched off abruptly, as
though from a twisting tap.
She’d spared me, I realised. Once more, the ghost of Arabella had held
back from destroying me utterly. But whereas before it had been because
she’d enjoyed toying with my terrified brain, this time it was because
Arabella feared me. This time, I possessed the means to threaten her. And
the means, it would appear, lay in that very doll I was now clutching in my
flapping, paper hands.FN37 Clearly, the toy itself was a conduit, too. After all,
the doll had originally contained the vengeful soul of Arabella Mathers,
which had since been able to flee the confines of its china shell and enter
the head of my own daughter.
But now, with Gwendolen gone mad, locked away and no longer of any
use to Arabella, the spirit had returned to its protective shell in the hope that
it might find another victim and continue down its path of supernatural
vengeance.
And all the while I held the doll, no one else could be caught in its
supernatural hold. Now I had the power. At long last, I could destroy
Arabella.
‘Too bad, missy,’ I said, gloatingly. ‘You had your chance.’
With an unholy shriek, the ghost threw up its hands in paranormal panic,
eyes widening in terror, as I calmly cast the foul figurine into the flames.
There was a huge explosion of fire as whatever source of flammable ink
inside it erupted. I was blown backwards against the wall of the house,
catching sight as I did so of Arabella’s spirit floating upward through the
rising smoke, swirling in circles among the spiralling clouds as she
screamed and screamed and screamed.
The noise was unlike anything I’d ever heard. Worse than Gwendolen
and Carlotta combined. A shriek of superunnatural panic. A scream of
paraabnormal defeat.
 ‘Now I’ll publish your books under my name,’ I roared. ‘With or without
your permission.’
I’d done it, then. I’d defeated Arabella Mathers. Now I, Nicholas Stein,
would go down in history as the greatest gothic novelist who’d ever lived.
I rose, unsteadily, to my knees, grateful to the Almighty that both
Gwendolen and I had been spared.
Then I saw it.
At first, a mere glimmer of movement in the heart of the blaze, but then
something more solid. What looked initially like a tiny fireball shot
suddenly forth from the flames and rolled – no, scurried – over the
intervening ground towards the front porch of the house.
And whatever the thing was, I could hear it laughing.
The screaming had gone, I realised. That shriek of ghostly terror flying in
the wind; that devastating other-worldly cry of supernatural sorrow, had
faded.
Replaced by the cruel, sadistic laughter of the doll.
It had been a trick, then. A means of luring me to my ultimate fate. A
fate, I now realised, which lay not in my own death by flame, but in the
death of my daughter, Gwendolen.
As the doll sprinted towards the door of the house, I plunged after it,
realising I had no way of catching it in time.
It collided with the wooden boards of the porch, recently soaked with the
ink exploding from my own body . . .
And the whole house erupted.
A rising wall of fire licked upward around the front door, blocking my
way in. Within seconds, the entire front was aflame, and there was no
longer any way at all that I could enter.
Then I heard Gwendolen’s cries from the attic high above. ‘Daddy! Help
me! Please! Daddy! Help me!’
But there was no way I could help. Nothing I could do to save her. As I
fumbled against the door, my arms burning in a vain attempt to break
through, I collapsed to the ground, despairing. Then, as the flaming heat
licked ever higher, I crawled back over to the trees, seeking shelter, weeping
as the cries from the attic above me finally fell silent.
Then I pulled the paper bag from my head, realising it was simply a
covering now, and unfolded the ragged strip of leathery parchment in my
hands. Staring up at me, sneering, was the crumpled portrait of Anton
Mathers.
Then only the laughter of Arabella remained.

Most of the house had gone, taking the basement with it too, this time. As I
looked down those scorched steps, I saw only a twisted mass of molten iron
below; the remains of Anton Mathers’ letterpress.
I moved through the ruins slowly, stepping over the rubble where the
front door had stood, and made my way up the blackened remains of the
burned stairwell.
Was it possible? I wondered. Could Gwendolen have survived? If the
door I could now sense above me, the door leading to that dark and lonely
attic room . . . If that had survived, could not Gwendolen have also been
spared?
Carefully, not wanting to make any sudden movement that might cause
what remained of the house to come crashing down about me, I made my
way slowly up the damaged staircase.
Maybe it was an act of mad desperation. A forlorn hope. Maybe any
second now, I would be plunging to my death as the ruins gave way, taking
me and whatever remained of Gwendolen along with it. But at least we
would die together. Father and daughter. And if there was any chance at all,
any remote possibility that I might still rescue Gwendolen from these
ghastly ruins, I had to take it.
As her father, I had to risk all. Prove to my daughter I cared.
Show Gwendolen that I truly loved her.
I was outside the door. The locks were gone, melted in the intense heat of
the flames. I leaned my head inward, resting it against the charred wooden
panelling, and listened.
Something was inside the room.
The room I’d locked her in.
A voice . . .
Faint it was; hardly a sound at all against the wild wind blowing in from
the coast beyond.
But definitely a voice.
Gwendolen’s voice.
 I pushed gently at the door, not wishing to upset the delicate balance
keeping what remained of these floundering ruins standing.
And there I saw her. Sitting in her small wooden baby chair.
My Gwendolen.
My precious, darling daughter. Untouched. Undamaged by the flames.
My dearest, beautiful daughter.
A doll.
Tenderly, I picked up the toy. It was the exact likeness of our girl, right
down to the first beautiful dress we’d picked for her together, before
everything in our lives began to go wrong.
‘Gwendolen,’ I said, starting to cry.
‘Daddy,’ said the doll, its arms and legs moving uncomfortably in my
hands, wanting to be set free from my grasp.
‘Daddy, help me. Please, Daddy, help me . . .’
It was my daughter’s voice, I knew. But I couldn’t help her now.
I could never help her again.
I set the doll back gently on its chair, then made my way back slowly
down the stairs.
Hoping the house would fall with me.

The End
 EPILOGUE

‘He’s crying again,’ said Nullman, consulting a fresh ream of medical

readouts.
Roz peered closely at the glass. She couldn’t tell with all that fluid
surrounding her former author.FN38
‘Well?’ she asked, glancing up at Nullman. ‘Was it worth it? Did you find
the leak?’
‘We did,’ said Nullman. ‘As soon as Valesco gets back from B&Q, we’ll
start blocking up the hole.’
‘And Nick?’ asked Roz, reaching out with one hand to caress the tank he
was encased within. ‘What about him?’
‘What about him?’
Roz turned aside, stifling her own tears. Aye, she guessed. That,
ultimately, was the rub. What was Nick Steen about, deep down?
She looked in at him, adrift somewhere amid the swirling, unknowable
turmoil of his own mind.
Alone. Stranded, in the dark endless space of his own internal cosmos.
Then she went and had lunch.
THE RANDYMAN
 PROLOGUE

Have you seen the Randyman, streaking through the night?

Have you seen the Randyman, flashing them a fright?
Wrapped up in his mackintosh, with his grubby trilby?
If you aren’t now dead in bed, then pretty soon you will be.
Watch out for the Randyman, who’s living in your pillow,
Beware his grubby mackintosh, when both flaps start to billow . . .

Seventeen times, Nick remembered. Say his name seventeen times and he’ll
appear. And, if the legend was true, and you happened to catch sight of
whatever the flashing dream-demon kept inside that billowing rain mac of
his, then blood would rush instantly to your extremities; the body’s internal
temperature would rise suddenly under the collar area, and before you knew
it, you were dead.
From exposure.FN39
If Nick’s memory wasn’t playing tricks on him, and it still might be,
given he’d lain slumbering for months in the unreal oblivion of a comatic
state, then the legend also had it that even if you woke up from your bad
dream, the terrifying Randyman could follow you into the real world, and
trap you in a waking nightmare.
If that happened, all you could do was run. Because if you ever caught
sight of the Randyman’s terrifying particulars, even for one fraction of a
nanosecond, it was lights out for you, and no chance in hell of your relatives
ever catching a final glimpse of your face in the casket. Not with that red-
skinned, wide-eyed grimace of horrified shock frozen on your bloated
visage. The frigid, tell-tale rictus of the fatally exposed . . .
Nick shuddered, forcing his mind elsewhere. Why was he even thinking
about the Randyman when he had a much more pressing issue to contend
with? Pressing being the operative word.
 Nick stared down at his stonk-on.
It was hard to tell if he was seeing it for real or not. For even in the
perpetual dream state in which Nick now found himself, the thing was
covered by the same white sheets of the mobile hospital bed he vaguely
recalled lying in when first he sank into a state of prolonged
unconsciousness.
He glanced outward, into the inner space of his own mind, but there was
very little he could see beyond the immediate area of his confinement. The
far edges of his vision blurred into darkening shadow, but as he gazed down
at the floor beneath the bed, he caught sight of grass, and thick brown mud
clogging the gurney’s wheels. He was in the middle of what looked to him
like a rain-bogged field.
Evidently, then, he was still dreaming. And quite unable to hide the
embarrassing tumescence he was no doubt wielding for real somewhere,
and in full public view.
Not that Nick really knew where that was anymore. He’d been trapped in
this dream state for so long that he could hardly recall events leading up to
his physical incarceration in the real world. He felt sure he’d been
imprisoned by some shadowy technical research facility, but who they were,
and why they were keeping him here, was no longer clear in his mind.
All Nick knew was that he was backed up. Seriously backed up. And
with no chance of self-administering some much-needed relief in this
comatose state, he was bound to endure his towering obelisk of shame for
the foreseeable, with no control over who, or what, bore witness to its
ascent. He could be arrested for public indecency for all he knew, without
even being remotely conscious of his crime. And then when, and if, he ever
woke up, he might be facing an immediate, and lengthy, jail sentence.
Surely there was some way to lower his muscular mast; commence
countdown on his own long-delayed flesh-rocket.
He could try reaching down with his dream-hands, but could he
genuinely wrestle himself into a less incriminating position? Wouldn’t the
gossamer touch of his fingers simply stoke his flames of pent-up passion
even further, proudly and loudly announcing his shame to some long-
suffering orderly?
Dammit, Nick Steen was no public park pervert. Even if his prolonged
sexual dalliances with a sado-masochistic typewriter had frequently given
his nearest and dearest regular food for thought, he was just an ordinary,
red-blooded male. That was all. Really, that was all.
Yet here he was, trapped inside his own mind, with all the loosened
inhibitions and rampaging primal urges of his unconscious id spilling
outward, threatening to destroy his own admittedly liberal interpretation of
what constituted public decency. Turning him into a depraved, primal, Pan-
like sexual pariah.
What the hell could he do about it?
And then it hit him. That’s why he’d been thinking of the Randyman,
wasn’t it? For although the terrifying dream-demon of Nick’s imagination
had been one of the most sinister creations he’d ever concocted, the truth
was that the Randyman himself was simply a wronged innocent. A lowly
toilet attendant by the name of Randy Streak, who’d been murdered by a
group of pitiless teenagers convinced he was the local flasher who’d been
terrorising Dankton Public Park.
In Nick’s original novel, Randy had subsequently come back from the
dead as a vengeful dream-demon, eviscerating the gang who’d murdered
him by killing them in their sleep, deliberately embodying the cruel
rumours they’d circulated about him and exposing them to whatever it was
he kept in that billowing rain mac of his . . .
That’s what was troubling Nick. If he couldn’t deal with his own
towering monument of mortification, he’d soon go the way of his literary
demon, condemned by society for a crime he hadn’t committed.
Nick Steen would become the real-life Randyman.
Randyman. Randyman. Randyman. Randyman. Randyman. Randyman.
Randyman, Randyman. Randyman. Randyman. Randyman. Randyman.
Randyman. Randyman. Randyman. Randyman. Randy—
No! Stop it, thought Nick. Don’t say that name seventeen times.
Don’t summon the Randyman, whatever you do. Because Randy Streak
is the last person you want making an appearance right now.
But already Nick could feel a subtle change in his perception, and he
realised with mounting horror that he had indeed already spoken the word
‘Randyman’ seventeen times, albeit internally, having mentioned that very
word in a previous internalised brain sentence; if he added that mention to
the sixteen instances of ‘Randyman’ he had uttered just after it, then it
constituted a grand total of seventeen spoken ‘Randymans’. Or
Randymen.FN40
 Without warning, an arm reached out from under Nick’s bed. It was long
– too long, Nick decided, as he watched the distorted limb snake slowly
upward from below, a ragged brown trilby hat clutched in its glistening,
sweaty hand. The lengthening appendage, which Nick now saw was
enclosed by the stained, beige material of a grubby rain mac, moved closer
to the risen tower of Nick’s private shame, and casually popped the trilby
over his sky-bound appendage. Then, just as slowly, the arm withdrew
again, sliding back under the bed as Nick’s ears took in the rasping,
wheezing snicker of a lecher’s cackle.
It was an unnerving sound, as if the babbling guffaws of Sid James and
Wilfrid Brambell had been combined aurally with those of Stacey Solomon,
then blasted through the faltering loudspeakers of some deconsecrated
church with gain and reverb levels set to max.
Before Nick could begin to wonder where the unholy limb had sprouted
from, the brown hat mounted uncannily on the end of his rod cocked wildly
to one side and the contours of a face appeared in the folds of the white
sheet masking Nick’s totem.
The face of Randy Streak.
‘Hey Nick,’ the face said. ‘Who’s a dirty boy?’
‘Get lost,’ growled Nick, realising he had no real voice left to speak with
after such a long time spent in the comatic realm.
The Randyman rattled out a cruel laugh, reaching again from under the
bed with its long arm to grab Nick’s totem with its mitt.
‘You can’t wilt me!’ it hissed, wrenching Nick’s truncheon backward, in
the direction of his feet.
Nick shrieked in pain as the Randyman cackled again. ‘What say we give
them a show, Nick? You and me, buddy boy. Let’s go streaking!’
‘No!’ wailed Nick, feeling blood rush back instantly into his nether
regions. ‘Never!’
A second arm sprang up from the opposite side of Nick’s bed. Nick
watched as it reached over his midriff and grabbed the edge of the cotton
sheet covering his body.
‘It’s showtime,’ cackled the Randyman, yanking the sheet backwards,
exposing Nick’s naked flesh.
The demon’s face was still there, Nick observed, only for real now. No
longer enmeshed in folds of cotton, the face was a mass of swollen, grime-
streaked skin with red pimples. A terrifying visage that was somehow
speaking, cackling, leering from the living flesh of Nick’s own perpetually
defiant punt-pole.
‘Wake me up!’ Nick yelled, unheard by anyone but himself. ‘Somebody
wake me up!’
But there was no chance of that happening, he knew. You didn’t just
conveniently wake up from a permanent coma. There had to be a
significant, emotionally compelling reason.FN41
With a burst of raucous laughter, the Randyman was suddenly above
Nick, its beige mackintosh billowing outward on both sides.
No, thought Nick. Not that. He had to look away. Had to avoid seeing
whatever it was that the Randyman kept inside its raincoat. Had to prevent
this literally nightmarish dream-demon from exposing itself.
But it was too late. The Randyman had already reached inward with both
hands and torn open its raincoat. There, in the one area all humanity feared
to glimpse, it lay.
The Randyman’s very own shaft of death.
Its toilet plunger.
‘No!’ screamed Nick, all too aware of what came next.
At least, he thought, preparing for the worst, his comatose state meant
there was no way Randy Streak could be unleashed into the real world. No
way its demonic presence could follow him back into reality, like he’d done
in Nick’s novel series. At least the dream-demon was trapped here with
Nick, inside the author’s mind.
‘Not for long,’ hissed the Randyman, grinning down at him.
Yanking the plunger from its groin, the Randyman held it outward,
toward the area of Nick’s heart.
‘No, wait! I know you’re innocent!’ screamed Nick. ‘I didn’t do that
terrible thing to you!’
‘Oh, but you did . . . writer!’ snarled the Randyman, and then it rammed
the plunger into Nick’s chest.
And sucked up his soul.
 CHAPTER ONE
‘The Phantascape’

‘Cigarette?’ asked Dr Nullman, Chief Head of the Nulltec Corporation.

Again, she offered the pack to Roz. And, again, Roz refused.
‘Thanks, but I only smoke cigars,’ said Roz. ‘Or pipes, if I’m in a
restaurant.’
And that hadn’t been for some time, Roz reflected sourly. Ever since
she’d accepted Nullman’s invitation to remain locked in the medical
research facility indefinitely as Nulltec’s ‘guest’, Roz had found herself
entirely relieved of her professional duties as editor of Clackett Publishing,
and similarly deprived of any kind of social life. And though the luxury
‘cell’-themed suite Nulltec had provided her with had finally been kitted out
with a functioning light bulb and toilet, Roz still wasn’t allowed her usual
shopping trips into Stalkford, meaning she was currently clean out of
pumice stones and marshmallow shag.
The only place Nullman had allowed her to visit, accompanied on each
occasion by two members of Nulltec’s security team, was Nick’s own
apartment, still uninhabited since the day he’d left on that last, fateful
flight.FN42 Having discovered Roz was in fact Nick Steen’s former editor,
Nullman had enlisted her services as a technical ‘advisor’ to Nick’s
rehabilitation programme, assigning Roz the task of locating any potent
information she could uncover concerning Nick’s private life, which might
help in sealing up the huge dimensional mind-leak currently housed inside
the writer’s brain.
And, initially at least, Roz had been only too eager to help. After all, the
hole to another plane of reality inside Nick’s mind, through which the
macabre denizens of his authorial imagination were currently pouring, had
been threatening not just the security of Stalkford, but also the existence of
its central shopping mall. Meaning that if someone didn’t soon start sorting
a solution to these recurrent supernatural eruptions, Roz’s preferred
tobacconist would soon be out of business and/or dead.
But events of late were giving her cause for concern. Nullman herself had
recently force-fed Nick’s subconscious a devastating tale that his conscious
mind had long been attempting to suppress.FN43 Not only that, but Dr
Valesco and his team of scientists had recently enrolled the unconscious
Nick in Nulltec’s experimental dream-therapy programme, rigging up the
author’s mind, along with those of several other patients, to a scientifically
engineered ‘mind-plane’ in the hope of creating an alternative shared
dream-reality known – and soon to be trademarked – as the ‘Phantascape’.
Roz had advised against it, but been completely ignored. Which,
fortunately, she was used to.
‘You are our last hope, Miss Bloom,’ said Dr Nullman, lighting another
cigarette. ‘The situation is grave, as you can see.’ She handed Roz a
technical readout that Roz didn’t understand and which she immediately
handed back. ‘Mr Steen’s mind appears to have disappeared from the
Phantascape entirely. He is no longer responding to our sensors.’
Nullman tapped cigarette ash into a bin beside her, then motioned for Roz
to sit. She, Valesco and several other scientists were gathered around a large
conference table in Nulltec’s main administrative boardroom. Roz, who’d
only just been summoned from her cell on the basement level, calmly took a
seat at the table, lit up a cherootFN44 and helped herself to coffee.
‘As you may know, Miss Bloom,’ said Dr Valesco, who was sitting on
Nullman’s right, ‘we recently enrolled Mr Steen’s mind in Nulltec’s
experimental dream-therapy programme, along with those of several other
volunteers. The whole thing’s aimed at creating an alternative shared
dream-reality, or scientifically engineered “mindplane”, if you will. We call
it the Phantascape.’
‘Except that Nick wasn’t exactly a volunteer, was he?’ said Roz, sucking
down a deep lungful of Myanmar’s less-than-finest before breaking into a
violent coughing fit.
‘Unfortunately,’ said Nullman, trying her best to ignore Roz’s wheezed
rasping, ‘ever since we first wired in Mr Steen’s brain, he’s proved fiercely
resistant to the entire programme. We had hoped our other volunteers might
somehow persuade him to brick up that mind-leak in his head without any
undue fuss.’
 ‘You don’t know Nick,’ said Roz, at last able to breathe again. ‘He
loathes builders.’ She laughed, proud of her spontaneously pithy quip. Even
Nick would have been impressed. ‘In fact, all labourers.’
‘So we’ve discovered,’ replied Nullman, unamused. ‘He point-blank
refuses to pay them.’
Roz sucked in another lungful of smoke, her face immediately quizzical.
‘I don’t follow.’
‘It’s best to think of the Phantascape metaphorically, Miss Bloom,’
Valesco explained. ‘Though the dream-world is a shared psychic reality, its
scientific workings are nevertheless best interpreted in fantastical terms.
Your “rogue trader” analogy is, in fact, quite apt. Having charged several of
our volunteers with the unenviable task of convincing Mr Steen to block up
the hole in his brain, they appeared to him within the Phantascape in
precisely that form. A group of door-stepping bricklayers hoping to make a
quick buck via the offer of a cheap half-day’s labour on Mr Steen’s psychic
fissure. Unfortunately, the author’s inherent distrust of the working class
meant that instead of effecting a quick and efficient fix, which would have
effectively sealed up the leak in Mr Steen’s mind with metaphorical cement,
there otherwise ensued a violent dispute over alleged requests for cash-in-
hand payments and unauthorised use of Mr Steen’s upstairs toilet. Not only
has the proposed work on Mr Steen’s mind-hole therefore failed to begin,
but he himself took a private shine to the bawdy wife of one of our
metaphorical builders, and has been subsequently concentrating his vital
mental energies on idle, unrequited erotic musings. The bottom line is that
the hole in his mind still exists, but he’s now refusing to co-operate. I
suspect the main problem may be that he’s severely “backed up”.’
Roz smiled to herself. That old chestnut. She often wondered whether all
the military confrontations throughout history might have been prevented if
only certain political leaders hadn’t been quite so ‘backed up’.
‘We need you to go in there, Miss Bloom.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Roz, through another thick cloud of cheroot smoke.
Nullman wafted it away as best she could in order to restore eye contact.
‘We want you to join the Phantascape. Journey inside Nick Steen’s
dream-world and convince him to block up that wall. Who knows, perhaps
you might even . . .’
‘Perhaps I might even what?’ said Roz, suddenly suspicious. She sensed
something in Nullman’s tone. Something ugly.
 ‘Perhaps you might even . . . oh, I don’t know . . .’
Roz held Nullman’s eye, forcing her to come clean.
‘Perhaps you might even grant Mr Steen some . . . shall we say . . .
executive relief?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Roz. Within, however, she felt oddly elated. Not by
the prospect of relieving Nick physically, which Roz currently had little
interest in (it was a Tuesday), but because she now had a chance to meet
with Nick again personally. Finally, she had an opportunity to talk to him
directly. Liaise with him. Convince him to somehow escape Nulltec’s walls,
which in Nick’s case, she strongly suspected, were tantamount to being
inside a prison. Finally, she had a chance to give Nick the letter.
She felt it there still, deep inside her pocket. No one in Nulltec had
bothered to check her on the way in, so flustered had she acted concerning
yet another missed opportunity to fill up on her precious stoved, flue-cured
Virginia.
It was from Georgina, Nick’s daughter. After years of silence, she’d
finally written back to him, telling him she missed her daddy terribly, and
wanted him to come and visit her. To see if they could get to know each
other again, after Nick’s divorce from her mother, Jacinta. And to see if
he’d lend her some money.
If anything could wake Nick from his comatose state, it was this letter.
Roz intended to read it to him right there in the Phantascape and, having
woken him for real in the corridors of Nulltec, effect their escape together.
For Roz suspected deep down that Nulltec had no intention of freeing
Nick, even if they could block up his mind-hole. His knowledge of other
mortal planes, other cosmic dimensions, was too valuable to let him walk
away a free man.
Without Roz’s help, Nick was destined to remain a prisoner in Nulltec: an
Incarcerat, to use Nick’s own term, for all eternity (or until he died, at any
rate).
No way, vowed Roz. Nick Steen was coming home. Together, they’d
report Nulltec, Valesco and Nullman herself to the authorities. Then they’d
have this shadowy medical research facility closed down once and for all.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Roz. ‘No problem.’
‘Good,’ replied Nullman, handing her a printed form. ‘Here’s all the
information you’ll need to enrol. Our technical expert in charge of the
Phantascape project is Dr Mike Crisis.’
 There was a murmur of laughter from Valesco and the other scientists
gathered around the table.
‘The big joke being,’ continued Nullman through a somewhat cruel
smile, ‘that he’s technically not very good in a crisis. In fact . . .’ – she
looked around the table, preparing her moment – ‘. . .you might say that he
was, ironically, terrible in a crisis!’
The gathered scientists erupted with laughter; Roz forced out a laugh,
too. She had to keep up appearances if she had any hope at all of reading
Nick the letter concealed in her pocket. And perhaps, as these gathered
experts were evidently implying, Mike Crisis was a hopeless bastard.
‘You’ll find the Phantascape laboratory in the neighbouring building
across our impressive glass bridge. Dr Valesco will show you the way.’
‘Come with me,’ said Valesco, rising from the table and leading Roz over
toward the door. As she passed before him into the corridor beyond, Valesco
turned back to face Nullman and winked.
‘And that’s the last we’ll see of her,’ whispered Nullman to herself, still
smiling.

‘Welcome to the Dream Team,’ said Dr Mike Crisis, reaching out eagerly to
shake Roz’s hand while inadvertently knocking her chin. ‘So sorry,’ he said,
reaching out abruptly with his other hand to steady her from falling, and
accidentally striking her chin again.
‘It’s fine,’ said Roz, pushing his hands away. ‘I’m quite alright.’ When
her eyes had finally stopped watering, she took a good look at him.
Mike Crisis was tall, slim and on the youthful side of thirty, Roz guessed.
And he was handsome, she decided. Strikingly so, in fact, but there was
also an air of awkwardness about the man that belied his smooth and
professional appearance. An invisible cloud of potential chaos lay dormant
somewhere, Roz sensed. An unseen presence, almost. Like a firework
wrongly angled towards a crowd of waiting spectators.
‘I’m Dr Crisis,’ he said, standing well back so Roz could enter the room
without harm. ‘The irony being that I’m apparently bad in a crisis,’ he
added, smiling. ‘Not good in a crisis, which would, of course, be preferred.’
‘I’m Roz Bloom,’ said Roz, extending her own hand towards his.
Nervous, he grabbed it far too tightly.
 ‘Ouch!’ Roz yelped.
‘S–sorry,’ he stammered, panicking. ‘You see, I’ve been twisting wire
components. Don’t know my own strength at the moment. Here – try this
one.’
He grabbed Roz’s hand again, this time with his other hand. A hand
sporting a glove he’d completely forgotten to take off.
‘Urgh,’ said Roz, drawing back her own palm. The rubber was wet.
‘God, sorry,’ said Crisis, panicking again. ‘I forgot to remove that.’
‘What’s on it?’ Roz asked, watching warily as Mike stretched the
dampened latex over his fingers.
‘You don’t want to know,’ he said, laughing nervously. ‘Really. Can I get
you a cup of tea?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Roz. ‘But do you have any marshmallow shag?’
‘Loads,’ said Mike, opening up a nearby cupboard. ‘My mother once
asked to me to buy her some cigarettes and before I knew it, I’d bought
thirteen hundred packets of pipe tobacco.’
He handed a pouch to Roz, then walked over to a kettle on the far side of
the room. ‘I’ll make one for me, at any rate.’
As Roz filled her pipe, she watched Mike from behind. So it was ‘Mike’
already, was it? she thought wryly to herself. Well, there was something
faintly endearing about the guy. She smirked to herself as he dropped not
one but two china mugs, shattering them into pieces on the laboratory floor.
Then gasped instinctively as Mike bent over, his rear end facing her, to mop
up the scattered shards.
Even though it was largely obscured by his lab coat, Roz could tell he
had one hell of an arse.
What on earth was she thinking? Why, she’d only just met the guy a
minute or so ago, and already she was obsessing about his rear cheeks, like
some panting female baboon on heat. She hadn’t even stopped to take in her
immediate whereabouts.
Forcing her eyes away from Mike’s buttocks, which he’d accidentally
fallen back on anyway while losing his balance in pursuit of an outlying
shard, she examined instead the interior of his laboratory.
The enclosure was large and light green in hue, surrounded on all sides
by the familiar-looking banks of medical monitors and computer terminals.
But in the centre of this particular room, arranged in a wide circle, were
several slumbering patients lying upon static gurneys. Their feet met in the
middle, while their heads pointed outwards, separated from the next in line
by a distance of about a couple of feet. There were eleven patients in total,
Roz counted, and like Nick, their scalps had been shaved and fitted with
small sensor pads, each transferring minute electrical signals via connecting
wires to a large processing unit on the far side of the room.
‘You might think I’m conducting ordinary electroencephalograms,’ said
Mike, rising from the floor and abandoning his plans for a cup of tea. ‘But
you’d be partly wrong. Yet also partly right. This is, to all intents and
purposes,’ he said, tapping one hand on the main processing unit, ‘an
electroencephalogram.’ As he tapped it, the unit immediately let out a large
spark somewhere around the back. With a look of concern, Mike quickly
checked behind the apparatus, sniffed the air several times, then turned back
to Roz. ‘But instead of monitoring certain conditions in the brain, it
monitors one’s dreams. Allowing us, via an elaborate computer network
we’ve been developing here at Nulltec for several years, to home in on a
patient’s subconscious imaginings and combine several dreams together at
the same time. The Phantascape, we call it.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Roz, wishing she could see his arse again.
‘You see, these people,’ he continued, indicating the sleeping patients
before them, ‘are all sharing each other’s dreams. Bar this individual,’ he
added, looking down worriedly at one of the unconscious volunteers. He
briefly checked the patient’s vitals. ‘Yes, for some reason,’ he said, talking
to himself now, ‘this particular volunteer is dead.’
‘Dead?’ repeated Roz.
‘I think because I may have forgotten to feed him,’ Mike added, running
over previous events in his mind. ‘In fact, yes, I remember now. Patient . . .’
He quickly checked the sleeper’s identity label. ‘Patient K . . . was at the
very end of the line last Tuesday . . . when I was filling up everyone’s drip.’
He nodded to himself, certain now. ‘And this one ran out, if I rightly recall .
. .’
A look of sudden confusion, then one of mounting concern, crossed the
doctor’s face for a brief second, before the expression changed yet again to
another emotion entirely. That’s it, thought Roz, recognising the mood as it
materialised before her. Shame. That’s the new look on Dr Mike Crisis’s
face. A look of shame.
‘You see?’ Mike said to Roz, his eyes welling up suddenly. ‘This is what
I’m talking about. This is the kind of crisis I cause, not avert. Just once,
Roz, I’d like to solve a crisis, instead of turning a bad crisis into an even
badder crisis.’
‘Or “bigger” crisis?’
‘That, too.’
‘But surely this particular crisis wasn’t a previous crisis that you then
escalated into a bigger crisis, Mike,’ said Roz, trying to comfort him.
‘Surely this crisis is simply a one-off crisis?’
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Mike Crisis. ‘There’s a crisis with
one of our patients. An ongoing crisis. He’s no longer responding to our
sensors. In fact, he may even have gone missing, somewhere in the
Phantascape.’
Nick! thought Roz, suddenly.
‘That’s why they assigned me to the Phantascape project in the first
place, Roz,’ Mike continued. ‘“You’re always one for dreaming on the job,
Mike Crisis,” they told me. “So we’re making you head of Nulltec’s new
dream-therapy programme.”’ He looked grimly at her. ‘They knew what
they were doing, Roz. Because the Phantascape project is a dangerous one.
And when something goes wrong, when there’s a crisis, Roz . . . like this
crisis . . . a disappearing patient . . . they know they can always blame Mike
“He’s Appalling in a Crisis” Crisis for it. When all along, I simply want to
be known as Mike “Solved a Crisis Like the Missing Patient Crisis” Crisis.’
He sat back moodily in his chair, which immediately tipped sideways as one
of its wheel-bearings snapped loose.
‘Nick Steen,’ said Roz, catching the doctor’s attention. Mike looked up at
her. ‘The patient’s name is Nick Steen, right?’
‘How do you know?’ said Mike, scrambling to his feet again.
‘Because I’ve been asked to find him, Mike. I’ve been told to enter the
Phantascape.’
‘No, Roz,’ said Mike, shaking his head. ‘It’s too dangerous for a girl like
you. This programme is still experimental. It’s not safe for unauthorised
persons.’
‘I am an authorised person,’ said Roz. ‘It’s on that sheet Dr Valesco
handed you.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mike, reading the sheet of paper he’d singularly failed to
take in first time round.
‘And I’m not a girl, either. In fact, Mike, if you’re lucky, you might well
find I can be all woman.’
 Mike failed to hear her, still assimilating the contents of Valesco’s letter.
‘Then I guess I, and you, have no choice,’ he said, finally looking up at
her.
‘Where is Nick?’ asked Roz. ‘His body, I mean.’
‘Over here,’ said Mike, leading Roz across the room to the far wall,
where a rectangular window looked out into an adjacent room.
At least Nick was no longer suspended in a tank of water, thought Roz.
Then she blushed with sudden embarrassment. Even though she knew Nick
had been ‘backed up’, she hadn’t quite expected the sight now confronting
her from his cosy-looking hospital bed. She hadn’t expected that.
‘Can’t anyone do anything about . . . that?’ she asked, somewhat
embarrassed.
‘We’ve tried everything in the book to deflate it. Bar one thing, of
course,’ he said, staring meaningfully at Roz, as if she alone held the key.
‘Would you, Roz? Because I . . .’ He gulped, sweat appearing on the top of
his brow, then whispered, ‘I just can’t.’
‘Nor can I,’ Roz whispered back. ‘And I mean that.’
‘Fine,’ said Mike, changing the subject. ‘Then let’s wire you in, shall
we?’
 CHAPTER TWO
‘Dankton’

Roz awoke in what looked to her like a run-down city park. Except, of
course, she hadn’t awoken at all. She was dreaming now, and had only just
this moment been put under by Dr Crisis, having pleaded with him for thirty
minutes not to shave her head. He’d agreed eventually and had instead
attached the sensors to a fake bald cap Roz always carried in her handbag
and which had, at long last, come in useful.
She examined the bleak expanse of greenery she was standing in. The
park was soggy underfoot, dampened by a downfall of recent autumnal rain.
The sky overhead was grey and gloomy, still heavy with cloud. Above the
far end of the park rose a number of neglected council flats, covered, even
when viewed from this far distance, with ugly daubs of graffiti.
Despite it consisting entirely of dream, something about the place felt
familiar to Roz. With a sudden spark of released memory, she recognised it
as Dankton, a run-down town on the eastern edge of Stalkfordshire which
she’d once visited with Nick on one of his less-salubrious research trips.
She couldn’t quite recall what specific horror novel Nick had been writing
at the time, but she recalled she’d detested the place, while Nick himself
had deemed it quite perfect for the book in question.
The park in front of her was large, but visibly empty at this early hour of
the evening. Spatters of fresh rain could be seen passing through the beams
of nearby street lamps, and further along the left-side edge, Roz could make
out the drab contours of a grey, concrete dwelling. The unpleasant smell
wafting from its direction suggested it was possibly a public convenience,
so Roz turned the other way and examined the right-hand side of the park
instead. There was no one here but her, it seemed. Where were all the other
dreamers? Roz was under the impression that she’d entered a shared
Phantascape, but currently it looked like she was the only one here. They
might be further afield, of course, but she didn’t much relish the thought of
journeying into Dankton itself, past those imposing council flats
overlooking the park’s furthest edge.
But she had to find Nick, didn’t she? Wasn’t that the reason she was
here?
So where was he?
‘Nick?’ she called out. Her voice echoed strangely, as if she’d been
yelling inside an abandoned ballroom. There was no response.
‘Nick Steen!’
Again, there was no response, except for a sudden lash of rain that fell
upon her at once from above, then ceased just as swiftly, leaving in its wake
only the foul, lingering stench of that far-off public convenience.
Roz shuddered, then stepped forward into the park itself.
And saw it.
A hospital bed, situated some distance ahead of her, standing alone in the
middle of the grass. Except it wasn’t completely alone, Roz realised. For
she could see a patient in the bed. A patient covered entirely in a white
sheet.
Roz paused for a moment, unnerved by the strange sight. She could feel
her heels sinking into the wet mud under her feet.
She stepped forward again. This was a dream, after all, wasn’t it? Things
were bound to be a little strange. Weird details like hospital beds in the
middle of a grassy park might be completely normal here.
She decided she’d see who the patient was.
As Roz made her way forward through the grass, the smell of the public
convenience once again wafted across from the left-hand side of the park.
Dankton really could do with a clean-up, she decided. Even in its dream
state.
As she moved closer to the hospital bed, stumbling across the soft, damp
grass, she could see something rising from the surface of the bedcovers.
Something completely still, yet positioned almost vertically, pointing
upwards, toward the sky. Maybe it was the patient himself sitting up in bed,
Roz wondered – but why would they be angled upright with a sheet over
their own head? Maybe they were trying to shield themselves from the
showering rain, she decided.
But surely a white cotton sheet wouldn’t do much good against a heavy
downpour? Then Roz saw what the shape really was. It wasn’t a sitting
patient, after all.
 It was a stonk-on.
A male stonk-on.
‘Nick!’ yelled Roz, a smile breaking across her face as she suddenly
quickened her pace toward the afflicted figure. ‘Nick Steen, it’s me! It’s
Roz Bloom!’
As Roz arrived at the bed, she could see that Nick’s truncheon had
practically set, like a concrete plinth, but there was little she could – or
would – do about that. All she need do now was read Nick the letter from
his daughter and then they could all get out of here. Out of Nulltec at last –
and then Nick could go somewhere private and do what he needed to do,
and everything would soon be back to normal. Even if ‘normal’ was still
abnormal in Nick’s case, what with all those escaping demons flying out of
his imagination at all hours of the day and night.
Roz stopped dead in her tracks. The sheet was covering Nick’s face, after
all. Behind his jutting joystick, Roz could see that the sheet covered the rest
of his body, including his real head. From here, she could see a small area
of cotton over his mouth area, rising and falling with each intake of breath.
‘Nick?’ she said again, more warily now. Why wasn’t he responding to
her? Was he somehow asleep inside another sinister dream-world within his
own sinister dream-world?FN45
‘Nick,’ Roz said again, more emphatically now, then reached out with her
hand toward the sheet. She had to know. Had to know if Nick could hear
her or not. Had to know if he was okay.
‘It’s me,’ she whispered. ‘It’s Roz.’ Swiftly, she tugged the sheet
backward across the patient’s face.
And uncovered Randy Streak.
‘Hey Roz,’ hissed the Randyman, leering up at her. ‘It sure is a relief to
see you!’
All at once, Randy’s love-brush erupted like a lit rocket, shooting
upwards through the sheet into the night sky, before exploding overhead in
a huge burst of raining, coloured sparks.
‘How’s that for a performance?’ laughed the Randyman.
Roz turned from the trolley and immediately ran back the way she’d
come, stumbling in a wild, frightened frenzy over the wet grass. So it hadn’t
been Nick at all in that bed, she realised, staggering back blindly to . . .
where? Where could she stagger back blindly to? There was nothing in
front of her now but a green mist, from which, presumably, she’d first
emerged when first entering the Phantascape.
‘Mike!’ she yelled aloud at the billowing cloud. ‘Mike, get me out of
here!’
‘Not Mike, Roz. Randy! My name’s Randy!’ said that same cruel voice,
as suddenly the face she’d last seen winking at her from the hospital bed
loomed out of the green bank of cloud, stretching itself toward her on a
long, protracted neck which Roz realised was interrupted at regular
intervals by riveted kinks, like a plumber’s U-bend.
Randy, Roz thought, trying to keep calm. I’m sure I know that name . . .
‘Get away from me!’ she yelled, unable to stop her feelings of panic, and
turned back again in the direction of the park. The hos-pital bed was no
longer before her, but from the left-hand side of the park came again that
foul, stagnant odour . . .
Roz ducked to the right, making for the other side of the park, hoping to
find another route into Dankton, where she presumed Nick and the other
dreamers were currently idling. No doubt the latter were indeed the lazy
labouring type after all, Roz figured. Probably knocking around some
abandoned flat or fish-and-chip shop, dodging decent work when they
ought to be out here, comparing notes with her about how to block up the
hole in Nick’s mind that had somehow released whatever foul dream-demon
had suddenly pounced at her out of the shadows.
Then, suddenly, she had it. A dream-demon! Of course! That’s where she
knew the name ‘Randy’ from. For Nick had once written a series of novels
about a dream-demon going by that very name, hadn’t he? But what was the
book? And even if Roz could remember its name, would that knowledge
even help her at this precise moment in time, with the damned thing right
behind her?
A horrifying thought struck her. Maybe there weren’t any other dreamers
here in the Phantascape, after all. Maybe they were all dead: not just the one
Mike Crisis had accidentally starved, but every single sleeper in the
laboratory. Perhaps this rampaging dream-demon had somehow destroyed
them all without Mike or Nulltec’s knowledge, and was now hell-bent on
destroying Roz too.
All at once she could see it again, darting toward her from the right-hand
side of the park this time, its brown mackintosh billowing in the chilling
October breeze as the thing ran alongside her, daring to yank open its mac.
Toying with her. Taunting her.
‘Wanna see what I got, lady?’ it yelled.
Oh God, thought Roz. It’s going to flash at me. It’s going to yank open
that grubby mac and show me its roamin’ candle again.
Or not, she thought suddenly – because some part of her mind was
remembering something else now, recalling the details of that very novel
Nick had written, which had been, even for him, one of the most odious
tales of his career. A tale Roz had informed him, in no uncertain terms,
needed a massive change if it was ever going to get past the editorial team
at Clackett – or indeed a national censorship board, were the book ever to
be adapted into a film one day (which it hadn’t). For this terrifying,
nauseating dream-demon currently pursuing her, she now knew, was none
other than the demonic toilet attendant Randy Streak from Nick’s novel The
Randyman.
‘Get a load of my rod!’ the demon yelled, tugging open its mac to reveal,
in the lower region of its groin, a protruding length of rubber-ended toilet
plunger.
There was no mistaking it now, Roz knew. This was Randy Streak,
alright. The forever-streaking, perennially flashing toilet attendant from
beyond the grave, whom Nick had, in his naivety, assumed a reading public
would return to in droves. And that plunger in its downstairs area was the
terrifying weapon it used to suck out the souls of its victims before plunging
them down into hell.
And the smell.
Roz suddenly realised, as she turned her head away from the demon’s
terrifying weapon toward that squat building on the far side of the green,
that the rancid reek factory was none other than Randy’s home. A
disgusting public convenience. For the local gents’ in Dankton Park was
where Randy had been drowned by a local gang of youths, before emerging
later as a hideous dream-demon, hell-bent on supernatural revenge.
And, she thought desperately as she sought to evade the pursuing demon,
there would have been no Randyman novels at all if Roz hadn’t advised
Nick to add one crucial element. No run of ever-popular sequels. No
Randyman 2: Nightmare in Dank Town; no Randyman 3: Mirror Streaker;
no Randyman IV: Nightstench; no Randyman V: U-benders (aka U-Bend or
U-Break); nor all those other terrifying toilet-attendant-based horror novels
leading up to the final instalment, Randyman 17: Death Plunge Sally. None
of these would have existed if Roz hadn’t advised Nick to make one small
change. One tiny alteration that turned the entire series into a prolonged
near-masterwork of supernatural terror.
Make Randy a victim, she’d said. A badly wronged, pitiful soul who’d
never once been the disgusting and dirty old sod the local youths who’d
murdered him had called him, day after day, night after night. It had been
Roz’s idea to make Randy the beleaguered, victimised scapegoat of a sick
society. It had been her suggestion that Nick should develop Randy’s back
story and prevent him being labelled as a genuine sex pest. With Roz’s help,
Randy’s character had assumed a depth and grace Nick Steen would never
have thought up himself.
Why, Randy Streak had simply been unable to fix all the blocked pipes in
that neglected public convenience he’d been assigned to. Which is why he
spent so long in the block alone, with no one outside knowing who he was
or why he was hanging around in the gents’ toilet for such lengthy periods
of time. And his clothes, too. Roz had even justified those. For that grubby
rain mac and flasher’s trilby Nick had come up with also had their own
back story. Why, was it Randy Streak’s fault that Dankton Council had
failed to provide him with any more official donkey jackets or rubber
waders, owing to the endless drainage and wear caused by ever-exploding
pipes and flooding U-bends? Was it Randy Streak’s fault that he’d been
forced to purchase a cheap raincoat and hat instead, in order to keep himself
dry and dapper in such a moist environment?
And then the ultimate detail. The coup de grace Roz had insisted Nick
add to his sordid little horror tale, which had turned Randy Streak’s
demonic and morally questionable hauntings on its head, transforming his
actions into an empathetic war of supernatural vengeance against his former
killers.
For Roz had told Nick to turn Randy’s unfortunate home – that miserable
public convenience in Dankton Park he permanently frequented – into the
very source of his own violent death.

Thus then, the story went, that late one night, the local gang of youths who’d mercilessly
bullied poor Randy Streak, spreading rumours that the innocent bog attendant was nothing
less than a dirty old man in a mac – a miserable toilet-trader-come-flashing-flesh-dangler –
crept up as one on that lonely toilet block in Dankton Park where Randy was at work within,
and disconnected the sewage pipe outlets. Then the murderous gang, doubling down on their
 evil act, carefully re-piped the toilets’ outlet flow back into Randy’s block, meaning the pipes
and U-bends Randy Streak was attending to began to rapidly refill, pumping raw sewage from
the neighbouring tower blocks back into the park’s only public convenience, with Randy Streak
trapped inside . . .
Then, stealing Randy’s spare plunger supply from the toilet’s adjacent stock cupboard, the
gang had gone to work on every nook and cranny, plunging the town’s escaping effluence back
into the small toilet block, until the water pressure inside built to catastrophic levels, and what
little remained of Randy’s half-drowned body exploded amid a geyser of Dankton’s not-yet-
fully-degraded sewage . . .

It had been a genuinely messy end, but with Roz’s help, Randy had, as a
result of his cruel and pointless murder, become halfway palatable to Nick’s
readers, and his success as a pulp-paperback horror villain partly assured.
But why was Randy Streak running around here, inside the Phantascape?
‘I’m going to plunge your soul, Roz Bloom. Plunge it down to hell!’
The Randy demon yanked the plunger from its groin and held it aloft,
laughing wildly at her.
There was nothing else Roz could do. She turned yet again, and ran in the
opposite direction.
Toward the gents’ on the far side of the park . . .
She knew it was a madness; knew that this was where Randy Streak had
lived and died, but there was no other place to run.
‘Mike!’ she screamed again, loudly. ‘Mike Crisis, wake me up, damn it!
Wake me up!’
‘How are your pipes, lady?’ laughed the Randyman, suddenly rising
upward from a patch of grass in front of her, its neck once more an
extended length of plastic piping, interrupted at regular intervals by twisting
U-bends, branch vents and rusting ball check valves. ‘Need a new closet
flange?’ cackled the dream-demon.
Roz lunged her body to one side in an attempt to dodge the Randyman’s
leering features, only to find its neck pipe extending with her, so that the
head of Randy Streak became a steady companion as she ran.
‘Nice drip leg,’ said the demon. ‘Quite a tailpiece! Wanna see my float
ball?’
‘Go away!’ cried Roz, running left again. Randy’s head went with her.
‘Fancy aerating my faucet, lady?’
Roz realised she was still heading in the direction of Randy’s toilet block.
She stopped suddenly, turning around yet again. Far behind was that
same bank of green mist through which she’d entered the Phantascape, but
in front of it now lay a complex network of detailed plumbing work, a vast
maze of tubes and piping that had somehow formed itself from Randy
Streak’s extending neck.
Becoming increasingly dizzy, Roz turned back to face the right-hand half
of the field, hoping that at least the path leading toward the distant flats was
now clear. But instead she was met with the same sight. A mass of
seemingly endless pipework, with jets of steam bursting from intermittent
valves.
She was trapped.
‘Come to my cubicle, Roz Bloom,’ hissed Randy, its head snaking round
her body to face her own once again. ‘And I’ll show you my sump pump.’
‘Never!’ Roz shouted.
‘Then get sucked!’ screamed the Randyman, its long, mackintoshed arms
suddenly appearing from two pungent vent stacks fixed either side of its
neck. One of them clutched in its hand the demon’s terrifying signature
toilet plunger, a Stonky 79-6C MasterClogger with detachable drip tray.
Roz prayed in silence as the demon levelled the weapon in the direction of
her heart.
‘Wait!’ she cried, eyes pleading with the dream-demon. ‘I know you’re
innocent! I know you were murdered by a gang of local youths! I know
you’re not really a stereotypical seventies sex pest!’
The plunger stopped stock-still in mid-air, inches from Roz’s chest. The
Randyman’s smile dropped as a look of sadness entered its eyes.
‘You see,’ continued Roz. ‘I told Nick to add that bit in. So that there’d
be a sympathetic angle to your character. So that readers wouldn’t
immediately throw Nick’s books – and you – into the nearest rubbish bin. I
gave you life.’
The Randyman’s arms and neck somehow retracted without Roz really
seeing anything, until he was standing before her in his mackintosh again,
looking like a normal man (although one you’d still avoid if you saw him in
the street).
‘Then join me,’ said the Randyman, its voice softer, mellower and less
Sid James-like than before. ‘Come live with me, Roz Bloom. Come stay
with me in my toilet block. A house made for two, seeing as cubicle three’s
currently blocked again. Together, you and I can fix that cracked urinal and
erase, at long last, the big brown smear over the hand-sink mirror. Come
with me, Roz Bloom . . .’
 The Randyman lowered its plunger, and held out its other hand.
No, thought Roz. I can’t. I can’t! Despite knowing that Randy Streak was
really a poor innocent, Roz couldn’t quite bear to be near someone who
drank their morning tea from a disused backflow prevention device.
‘Mike!’ she screamed again. ‘Wake me up! Please! Wake me up!’
‘No!’ roared the Randyman, raising its plunger once again. ‘Join me, Roz
Bloom, or be ex-plunged!’
Roz sensed she had about a second or two left before Randy Streak’s
plunger sucked out her soul. As her hand travelled instinctively to the
region of her heart, preparing itself for a final, desperate defence, she felt
something solid under her hands, perched there in the breast pocket of her
coat.
Her fountain pen.
As the Randyman commenced its deathly plunge, Roz whipped the
fountain pen from her pocket and, moving as fast as she could, stabbed the
pointed nib hard into her leg . . .
 CHAPTER THREE
‘The Randyman’

. . . and woke suddenly, back in the laboratory. She lurched immediately

from the bed she’d been lying on and rose into a sitting position, yanking
the wires from her sweating bald cap.
‘Help!’ she cried. ‘Someone help me!’
At the sound of her yelling, a figure snorted from a nearby chair. As Dr
Mike Crisis woke from sleep, the book he’d been reading dropped to the
floor.
‘Mike!’ yelled Roz, hurling the clump of wires in his direction. ‘Where
the hell were you?’
‘Huh?’ he muttered, still drowsy from sleep.
‘I was trapped in the Phantascape, with that . . . that thing chasing me!’
‘Trapped?’ said Mike, still groggy. ‘Thing? . . . Chasing you?’
‘That demon thing. That’s not a dream you have operating inside the
Phantascape, Mike Crisis. It’s a nightmare!’
Roz felt good letting off a little steam. She so rarely got the chance to do
that with Nick, who always immediately threatened to call the head bods at
Clackett and have her fired for any signs, faint or otherwise, of
insubordination towards their much-valued author. Not that they’d said
anything to Roz when he’d actually called on that one occasion. In fact,
she’d heard they’d simply laughed at him. But still, it wasn’t worth getting
on Nick’s bad side, given how prolific he was as an author. He kept Roz in
work, after all, even if by and large the editing notes she typed up for him
were immediately rebuffed, rejected and posted back to her with insufficient
postage attached.
‘What demon thing?’ said Mike, slowly coming round.
‘That damned dream-demon in a flasher’s mac. Randy Streak.’
Mike still looked confused.
‘The Randyman!’ snapped Roz.
 That woke him up.
‘You . . . You mean this guy?’ He picked up the book he’d been reading
from the floor and showed Roz the cover. It was a paperback copy of the
original Randyman by Nick Steen. The one book of Nick’s that Roz had
successfully slightly edited.
‘Why the hell are you reading that thing?’ asked Roz, starting to feel
reality crashing down around her all over again.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mike. ‘I must have fallen asleep reading it. Typical me,
I’m afraid. I always set out to stay alert and monitor my patients in a
thorough and professional manner, but then end up falling asleep while I’m
supposed to be staying awake. I swear it’s all to do with that damned name
of mine, Roz. I tell you, having a moniker like Mike Crisis when you’re
trying to iron out a veritable litany of professional errors and innate human
weaknesses is pretty draining. I sincerely believe it’s why I keep falling
asleep on the job.’
‘I asked you a question, Mike,’ said Roz. ‘Why are you reading that
book?’
Mike turned the novel over so that he could get a good look at the cover
illustration. ‘It’s a pretty good read, this, Roz. And Mr Steen himself wrote
it, I understand?’
‘Yes, he did,’ said Roz. ‘And right now that thing’s in there, in the shared
dream-world you’re supposed to be overseeing. The Randyman’s loose
inside the Phantascape.’
‘Impossible,’ said Mike, getting up from his seat to check the monitoring
equipment, before tripping on a wire and accidentally disconnecting
everything. ‘Damn it,’ he said. ‘I knew I shouldn’t wear slippers on the job.
Just lulls me into a false sense of comfort and I start slouching around.’
Roz rolled her eyes. Despite being initially attracted to Mike Crisis, she
was fast going off the idea. ‘Who gave that book to you?’
‘Nobody,’ he replied. ‘I was just reading it for research. Someone left it
in the locker room.’
‘And you’ve been reading it on the job?’
‘Yes,’ said Mike. ‘Should I not be? I’m only trying to get acquainted with
Mr Steen’s oeuvre, so that I can better control his input inside the
Phantascape.’
Something wasn’t adding up, Roz decided. Why, of all the hellish
creatures in all the hundreds of books Nick Steen had written, would this
particular murderous dream-demon be suddenly set loose inside a real-life
dream-therapy experiment, just as the overseer of that very same
experiment was reading the book featuring said dream-demon while on the
job?
It was too great a coincidence to be put down to mere bad fortune. This
was Mike Crisis, after all, thought Roz. And when you considered the
doctor’s chequered career and propensity for escalating a crisis instead of
easing it, it all suddenly became a damn sight clearer. Of course Mike Crisis
had inadvertently caused the demon’s accidental escape. It didn’t need
looking at any further.
‘So were you reading that particular book while I was in there?’ asked
Roz, accepting the bandage Mike handed her to help seal the gaping
fountain-pen-shaped hole in her leg.
‘I was,’ admitted Mike, ‘but that shouldn’t affect the programme itself.
You can only gain access to the Phantascape by being wired in via your
brain and knocked out with industrial-strength sleeping pills.’
Roz thought for a moment, wondering whether she should word her next
question carefully or not. Then she decided her leg was in a lot of pain and
came straight out with it.
‘Do you read your books aloud?’
‘Aloud?’ said Mike, a sudden look of embarrassment spreading across
his face. ‘Of course not, Roz. I’m not a child. Only children read books
aloud.’
‘Or people with reading difficulties,’ said Roz. ‘That’s nothing to be
ashamed about, Mike. Nick himself reads with his face mere millimetres
from each page. Luckily he rarely has time to read, because he’s so busy
writing.’
‘I don’t read aloud,’ growled Mike, scowling.
Roz sighed. She had to go in hard. ‘Look, don’t turn another major crisis
into a catastrophic crisis, Mike. We currently have a huge problem with the
Phantascape. There’s a dream-demon running loose inside which may soon
suck up the souls of these slumbering volunteers. Now tell me the truth. Do
you read stories to yourself aloud?’
‘Okay,’ said Mike grumpily, striding over to the far side of the room, his
head turned away from Roz’s own. ‘I do read aloud. I can’t help it. It helps
me picture the scene and I like doing the voices. There,’ he said, turning to
face Roz again. ‘Are you satisfied?’
 ‘Not really, Mike,’ said Roz. ‘Because that means that you’ve
inadvertently awoken memories of Nick’s terrifying dream-demon, the
Randyman, inside his conscious psyche, which has since been released into
the Phantascape. The project’s a potential disaster waiting to happen, Mike.
Because whoever dares set foot inside the Phantascape now is taking their
life into their own hands. In fact, it’s worse than that,’ said Roz. ‘They’re
putting their lives into your hands. You alone control their safety inside the
Phantascape, Mike Crisis. But you now have a rival, threatening the lives of
every single person you wire in. A dream-demon. A terrifying monster of
the mind, hell-bent on plunging everyone’s souls into Hell.’
‘Then I guess I ought to abort the project,’ said Mike.
‘You think?’
‘Look, you don’t understand, Roz. It’s not as easy as all that. Nullman
gave me this job as a way of proving myself. If I don’t measure up for once
in my professional life, all my hopes of becoming a brain surgeon will be
dashed. I need to prove that, just once, Roz, I can turn a diabolical crisis
into only a minor crisis. Or ideally not remotely a crisis at all. If I don’t turn
the Phantascape project into a success, I’ll never get a chance to have a
scalpel in my hand, hovering over the exposed brain of some quivering
innocent. I’ll never get the opportunity to get stuck in to that troublesome
lobe and remove all the bad bits of brain.’
‘I think that’s probably a good thing,’ said Roz.
Mike sighed, his shoulders slumping with sudden dejection. ‘You’re just
like all the rest.’
‘Look, there won’t be any “all the rest” if you don’t measure up in this
particular crisis, Mike Crisis,’ snapped Roz. ‘Haven’t you read that book
fully? From page to page?’
‘I skipped a few bits,’ said Mike, forlornly.
‘Well, I suggest you read it in full,’ said Roz. ‘Plus all the sequels. Away
from this laboratory, I might add. Because then you might realise that
Randy Streak, the dream-demon known as the Randyman, also has the
ability to follow its victims into the real world when they wake up. Our
world, Mike! The Randyman can escape into our reality, turning the very
world around us into a living, breathing, waking nightmare!’
‘No, Roz . . .’ whispered Mike, a look of fear in his eyes. ‘Surely not?’
‘Yes, Mike,’ said Roz, correcting him. ‘A waking nightmare inside this
very building. Not even the walls of Nulltec would be able to contain it!’
 ‘So I really should go and report all this to Dr Nullman, then?’
‘Yes, Mike,’ said Roz, exasperated. ‘You should.’
Mike nodded, solemnly. ‘And cancel the programme outright, I guess.’
‘Yes, Mike,’ sighed Roz. ‘And cancel the programme outright. No ifs. No
buts.’
Mike nodded again, thinking deeply, then finally looked up, a fresh and
hitherto unseen determined expression on his face. An expression that
immediately faded as he looked earnestly at Roz. ‘Can you come with me?’

They got lost three times crossing the impressive glass bridge back into the
main building when Mike stopped to take in the view below (mainly grass),
then forgot which direction he’d been walking in. Eventually, Roz steered
him the right way again and they reached Nullman’s office without further
incident, apart from Mike tripping on a flat floor-tile, which necessitated a
brief detour via the first aid room. An hour later, they were finally outside.
Three hours later, they were allowed in.
‘And you’re saying that the entire Phantascape project has to be
aborted?’ said Nullman, steelily.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mike Crisis.
‘You do know,’ said Roz, nudging him.
‘Do I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay.’
‘Tell her, then.’
‘Who, Dr Nullman?’
‘Yes, that’s why we’re both standing here.’
‘Right . . .’ He looked up nervously at the Chief Head of the Nulltec
Corporation, gulped, then finally spoke. ‘That’s not what I’m saying to
you,’ he said.
Nullman’s glare softened a little. Then Roz nudged him again.
‘That’s what I’m telling you, Nullman,’ he added.
Nullman’s glare returned, harsher now. ‘And who are you to tell me
that?’
‘I’m . . . I’m . . .’
Roz nudged Mike a third time.
 ‘I’m Dr Mike Crisis, that’s who. And you’d best remember that name,
Nullman, and remember it well. Sorry, I meant Dr Nullman. You have a
major crisis unfolding in the Phantascape project. A major crisis that could
soon escalate into an even more major crisis.’
‘A catastrophic crisis,’ whispered Roz.
‘A catastrophic crisis,’ added Mike Crisis. ‘A catastrophic crisis, that if
left unchecked, could itself escalate before you know it into an even more
catastrophic crisis.’
‘An apocalyptic crisis,’ whispered Roz.
‘An apocalyptic crisis,’ Mike added. ‘And then, if that in turn is left
unchecked, you might even be facing a post-apocalyptic crisis.’
He glanced at Roz, who nodded back at him approvingly.
‘Oh come now, Dr Crisis,’ said Nullman. ‘We’re hardly going to be
operating anywhere near that small nuclear reactor we maintain in the
darkest bowels of the building, are we?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mike, genuinely confused. He looked at Roz. ‘Are
we?’
Roz decided to take over. ‘Look, Dr Nullman, a terrifying dream-demon
has escaped from Nick’s mind,’ she said. ‘And it’s currently capable of
infecting the minds of everyone else wired into the Phantascape.’
‘I see,’ said Nullman, finally looking mildly concerned.
‘That means everyone involved in the project is potentially going to have
their souls sucked out and thrust into Hell by a demonic toilet plunger.’
‘Run that past me again,’ said Dr Valesco, interrupting. Roz had almost
forgotten he was there, so quietly had he been waiting at the table, pulling
tiny hats down over the heads of small mice in a plastic tray, covering their
eyes. Roz shuddered. These Nulltec ‘experiments’ were starting to grate on
her. She’d be reporting that to the authorities, too, as soon as she was able.
No one should have to witness the heads of small mice being artificially
blinded in a plastic tray, even if the experiment was essential to Mankind’s
wellbeing.
‘Nick once wrote a story called The Randyman, about a dream-demon
called Randy Streak,’ Roz explained. ‘He was a toilet attendant accused of
being a flasher by a group of local youths who one night murdered him
inside the rancid local gents’ he was perennially servicing. Randy then
came back from the grave, haunting the dreams of the killer youths in the
form of the terrifying Randyman; a dream-demon wielding a Satanic toilet
plunger intent on sucking out the souls of the gang before flushing them
down to Hell. But here’s the catch,’ said Roz, looking round to ensure she
had everyone’s undivided attention.
Valesco was looking elsewhere at that moment, though, so she waited
until he looked back in her direction again. Then resumed.
‘The Randyman can follow people back from their dreams into the real
world – the demon’s plunger essentially enables it to pump itself through
the U-bend of dream into another reality. Meaning that if something isn’t
done immediately to check the Randyman’s influence over the Phantascape
project, pretty soon we’ll be dealing with a real-life dream-demon here on
the ward. A ghost in the form of a pervert in a mac at loose inside the
facility.’
There was a moment of stunned silence as Roz’s words slowly sank in.
Finally, Nullman spoke.
‘And how did this particular book get into the Phantascape, exactly?
We’re monitoring every thought rising from Mr Steen’s unconscious mind.
Anything potentially dangerous – like the novel in question, or its numerous
tired sequels – could never have seeped through into his subconscious mind
without our knowledge and immediate intervention.’
Mike grew suddenly sheepish. Roz felt a momentary wave of sympathy
for him, then decided that she didn’t fancy him after all and elected to land
him in it. After all, it was the only thing that might lead towards Mike Crisis
mastering a potential crisis rather than the crisis itself mastering Mike
Crisis.
‘He read the book aloud,’ said Roz, turning to face the former brief
object of her affections. ‘I’m sorry, Mike.’
‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘I deserve all I get.’
‘Why were you reading that book?’ demanded Nullman.
‘I found it in the locker room,’ Mike said, weakly.
‘Rubbish,’ said Valesco, pulling a miniscule sou’wester over the eyes of
another confused mouse. ‘We sent that book to you directly with the
specific instruction to destroy it. The letter we sent to you said on no
account must you read that book aloud anywhere in the vicinity of Mr Steen
while his comatose body was engaged inside the Phantascape project.’
‘I didn’t receive any letter,’ said Mike.
‘Enough lies, Dr Crisis!’ snapped Nullman. ‘You’ve already made a
complete hash of the Phantascape project, and now you’re making your
position infinitely worse by attempting to weasel your way out of any form
of personal responsibility.’
‘Or culpability,’ added Valesco, temporarily blinding two more mice with
miniature baseball caps.
‘We are holding you entirely responsible for what has happened to the
Phantascape project, Dr Crisis,’ said Nullman sternly. ‘But it will not be
cancelled, terminated or aborted. Unless you take immediate steps to rectify
the situation, you will be dismissed from our institution permanently and
your scientific career will be over.’
‘But how?’ said Mike, his voice wavering. ‘How do I do that?’
‘God, you’re quite pathetic, aren’t you?’ snapped Nullman, lighting a
cigarette and blowing the smoke directly in Mike’s eyes so that, at long last,
he began to cry.
‘By solving this crisis before this particular crisis solves you. Capture
that dream-demon in the Phantascape and send it back through the mind-
gap in Nick Steen’s brain. Then seal the metaphorical wall up once and for
all.’
‘But what if the Randyman finds a way into our own reality first?’
interrupted Roz, having realised Mike was currently in no position to
engage intelligently with the conversation. ‘Before we get a chance to send
him back through that hole to another dimension in Nick’s mind, I mean?
What if he beats us to it?’
‘Then use bait to trap him,’ said Valesco, looking up again from his tray
of fully blinded yet brightly dressed mice.
‘An excellent idea, Dr Valesco,’ said Nullman coldly, the trace of a faint
smile visible on her lips. She glared meaningfully at Roz. ‘I’m sure Miss
Bloom will oblige . . .’
 CHAPTER FOUR
‘Crises’

Halfway across the glass bridge, Mike drew to a halt.

‘Please keep walking, Mike,’ said Roz. ‘Otherwise we’re liable to get lost
again.’
‘Why not stand directly in front of me, Roz? Then I’ll know which
direction we’re headed in.’
Roz rolled her eyes again and stood in front of Mike.
‘Look, Roz, you don’t work here full-time. I do. I’m forever getting lost
in these seemingly endless Nulltec corridors. That’s why I always get
distracted when walking across this glass bridge. It’s the only time I get to
see out. And sometimes, when that pain of being terrible in a crisis really
gets to me, all I want to do is just stand right here in this spot and look out
on to that area of grass below me and imagine myself lying in it, feeling the
brush of natural vegetation against my skin, watching those glorious white
clouds roll by overhead. Believing that somewhere, somewhere out there,
lies a world in which Mike Crisis is an asset in a major crisis and not a
liability. A world where people actively seek out Mike Crisis for solutions
to their crises, rather than running sniggering from him in an effort to
escape an ever-worsening crisis. That’s why I get lost here, Roz. Because
this glass bridge is the only place I can see clearly.’
‘This is entirely the wrong time for self-reflection, Mike,’ snapped Roz
sternly. ‘The terrifying scenario we now find ourselves caught up in has
barely even begun, and you’re already indulging in a pointless, ruminatory
bout of internal self-pitifance. I wouldn’t object if we were near a point of
ultimate crisis, some way further into this macabre series of events we sense
unfolding frighteningly about us, but we’ve barely even begun our journey
into darkness. And frankly?’
‘Yes?’ replied Mike, looking suitably chastised.
 ‘Frankly, Mike Crisis, I should be the one feeling sorry for myself. I’m
the one who’s been chased by a dream-demon. I’m the one who’s nearly had
my soul sucked out by a cursed plunger and who’s now been told to return
to the Phantascape in order to entice the Randyman back into a hole in
Nick’s head, currently located somewhere inside a dream-version of
Dankton, probably in one of those disgusting-looking distant tower blocks I
glimpsed on the horizon. I’m the one the Randyman has asked to move in
with it, Mike, which will no doubt mean having to pretend I’m interested in
the contents of its grubby mackintosh for the foreseeable. And yet despite
all that, I wouldn’t dare to start feeling sorry for myself until I was at the
ultimate crisis point – say, around three-quarters of the way into whatever
eerie events may yet transpire. So buck up and stop feeling sorry for
yourself, because we have work to do.’
Mike looked at her, nodding firmly. ‘I’m sorry, Roz.’
‘And stop apologising, dammit. Just start thinking, will you?’
Mike placed both hands on Roz’s shoulders, commanding her attention.
‘Listen Roz, I meant every word of what I said back there. Neither Nullman
nor Valesco gave me a letter instructing me to destroy that book. Like I said
before, I found Nick’s novel in my locker room. Inside my own locker, if
you really want to know.’
‘Are you lying to me, Mike?’ asked Roz, staring deeply into the doctor’s
eyes. She wanted to believe him, but knew that he was essentially a pathetic
individual.
Mike’s orbs darted immediately to the left.
‘I knew it,’ Roz said, coldly. ‘I knew you were lying to me.’
‘No, Roz,’ said Mike, releasing her shoulders. ‘I meant it. My eyes
darting left just then was merely another example of my own brain’s innate
crisis-escalating tendencies. It’s as if my own mind wants to condemn me
for something I haven’t yet done! Sometimes,’ he said, grasping his head
tightly by the temples, ‘sometimes I’d like to sit down and perform some
damned brain surgery on my own head! Just sit down at a mirror
somewhere and slice my own skull apart. Root around inside it for a bit and
pull out those damned synapses which are always telling me I can’t do
anything right!’
He burst into tears.
‘Stop, Mike, stop!’ said Roz, hugging him close. She couldn’t help it.
Part of her still felt for Mike physically, and this seemed the best possible
way to get a good feel of his arse. Wondering whether she might get away
with moving one hand surreptitiously downwards in the direction of his
butt, Roz eventually decided against it, suspecting the motion was
technically illegal, despite her being a woman. She pushed Mike away.
‘Listen, Mike. You don’t have to lie to me, okay? I know you’re bloody
hopeless in a crisis. I know you read that book aloud to Nick because you’re
instinctively unable to conduct yourself in a competent and professional
manner. But the bottom line is that we have to sort out this particular crisis
as a matter of urgency, and I have to tell you now . . .’ She paused for a
moment, unsure whether she should say what she was about to say.
‘What, Roz?’ said Mike, pleading with her. ‘What do you have to tell
me?’
‘That I’m not going back in there, Mike. The Phantascape, I mean. I’m
not letting you wire me in again.’
‘But you have to go in, Roz,’ said Mike. ‘They’ve said you must.
They’ve told me to use you as bait.’
‘Then you’ll have to find another way,’ Roz insisted, turning away from
him abruptly and walking across to the far side of the bridge.
Mike immediately began walking in the opposite direction, back towards
the main facility, then realised Roz wasn’t in front of him and turned back
round, quickening his pace to catch up with her.
‘You must go in there, Roz,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll get in trouble again. They’ll
fire me. I’ll never make it into the exciting world of experimental brain
surgery.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Roz, striding boldly ahead. ‘I’m not going anywhere
near the Randyman again. It’s rank.’
‘But Roz,’ Mike shouted, tripping over some dust before rising again,
then sprinting to catch up with her. ‘If you don’t go in, how can we possibly
get rid of the dream-demon?’
‘That’s your problem, Mike, not mine. I’m willing to help you, but this is
a task you’re ultimately in charge of. You deal with it. I’m going back to my
cell.’
‘Fine,’ Mike yelled. ‘Then maybe I’ll just kill Nick Steen.’
Roz whirled round, unable to believe what she’d just heard.
‘Yeah, you heard me,’ howled Mike Crisis. ‘I’ve accidentally let one
patient starve to death. Why not another one? And if Nick Steen dies,
presumably the dream-demon inside him also dies. Given the damned
thing’s coming out of his own head. There. Problem solved. Crisis averted.’
‘You can’t do that!’ Roz cried.
‘I can, Roz, and I will,’ he said. ‘You said yourself, it’s high time I took
control of things. High time I turned this crisis into less of a crisis. Well,
now I will. And once I’ve switched off Mr Steen’s life-support system, then
Mike Crisis will forever be known as a man who’s great in a crisis, as
opposed to being perpetually bloody appalling in a crisis.’
He stormed past Roz, off the glass bridge and into the waiting elevator
that would soon take him up to the main laboratory floor.
‘Wait!’ Roz cried, running after him. ‘Wait for me!’
Her body became trapped painfully in the closing door, owing to Mike
not realising that basic elevator etiquette meant you were expected to
attempt to hold the door in the event of any straggling ascenders or
descenders trying to hitch a lift with you.
Mike dragged Roz’s body through into the lift, scraping both her legs on
the metal door-frame.
‘You idiot!’ she said, once she’d been pulled through.
‘Not for much longer, Roz,’ Mike huffed.
She could sense something different in him now. An anger, maybe. An
anger borne of desperation and, more frighteningly, determination. The
determination of a blind and reckless crisis-amplifier.
‘If you dare touch a hair on Nick’s head, I’ll destroy the hair on your
head,’ said Roz, warning him. And in that moment, she caught another new
emotion in Mike’s expression. A trace of sadness, she thought. Evidence,
uncertain though it might be, of emotional hurt. Was it possible that Mike
Crisis fancied her, too?
She stared meaningfully at him, raising her eyebrow suggestively while
hitching up her skirt over one knee. Mike gulped, then hit the elevator
button. The lift began descending rapidly to the lower floors.
‘Your laboratory’s upstairs,’ said Roz.
‘Damn,’ said Mike to himself, hammering the ‘up’ button frantically. The
lift stopped at another floor, allowing two scientists holding a mutant baby
in a pair of forceps to step in. By the time they’d got out again on floor
thirteen, the sexual tension between Roz and Mike was proving completely
unbearable.
 ‘Are you and Nick Steen an item?’ asked Mike, his casual tone at odds
with his flushing cheeks.
‘How do you mean?’ said Roz.
‘Well . . . Are you and he . . . lovers?’
Should she pretend, Roz wondered? Just for one blissful, golden
moment? Did it really matter that she and Nick weren’t? But then Roz
stopped herself, realising, as she always did in these situations, that these
complex emotions regarding Nick’s potential attractiveness were merely a
lingering trace of her favourite author’s imaginative influence on the world
around her. A remnant of Nick’s fictional mind, having a perpetual effect on
those living – and generally suffering – in its wake.
‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re not lovers. And never have been. He’s just a great
writer, okay?’
‘Really?’
‘Really. A really, really great writer. The best. And for that reason alone,
you can’t kill him, Mike. You just can’t.’ It was her turn to cry. Her turn to
reveal an emotional hurt, deep down within her. She reached into her pocket
for a tissue, seeing that Mike wasn’t going to offer her one, and dried her
eyes.
Mike reached out, placing a hand on her shoulder again. ‘I have to,’ he
said.
Before Roz could respond, the elevator door opened again and they were
back out on the main corridor leading up to the laboratory currently housing
the Phantascape project.
Mike had lost his identity card, so had to phone down for permission to
enter his own room, but within three hours they were both back inside the
laboratory.
Mike briefly checked the monitor screens, making sure the drips feeding
the volunteers were still half-full, then crossed over towards the window of
the adjacent room, overlooking Nick’s bed.
Roz was already there, quivering with fright.
‘He’s gone,’ she said.
‘Gone? What do you mean “gone”?’
‘What I said, dammit!’ cried Roz. ‘Nick Steen’s body has gone!’
Mike looked into the room beyond. She was right. Nick Steen’s body had
vanished. Before them lay an empty gurney. Everything – the bedding, the
monitoring equipment, the wiring – everything keeping Nick Steen
connected to the Phantascape had been removed.
Mike rushed over to the main computer terminal again, looking
frantically through the readouts.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘I’m still getting life-signs.’
‘Meaning?’ said Roz.
‘Meaning somehow, somewhere, he’s still plugged in to the
Phantascape.’ Mike turned to face her. ‘Nick’s still part of the programme.
Only we no longer have access to him. Someone, or something, has taken
his body away.’
‘Hopefully someone,’ said Roz.
Suddenly there was an unholy laugh, coming from above her. Or below.
Roz couldn’t tell. It sounded like the cackling of Sid James mixed with
Wilfrid Brambell’s bad-breathed whining and the spirited guffawing of
Stacey Solomon.
‘Then again, maybe it’s something, as you say,’ Roz said, looking
nervously at Mike. ‘Did you hear it?’
‘I heard something,’ said Mike. ‘But I think it was my stomach rumbling.
I haven’t had lunch yet.’
So only Roz had heard it. That terrifying, soul-threatening laugh of the
Randyman. Was she going mad? Or had the dream-demon itself stolen Nick
from this place? Was the Randyman already loose in Nulltec? Had it
somehow escaped the Phantascape without Roz knowing and kidnapped its
own creator? Had it, God forbid, already plunged Nick’s soul into the
depths of Hell?
Mike whooped in sudden realisation. ‘Of course!’ he yelled. He turned to
face Roz. ‘Don’t you see?’
‘See what?’ Roz replied, still frightened.
‘I was telling you the truth all along, dammit. Nulltec have taken Nick’s
body. No doubt Valesco’s team came down here while we were having that
dramatic emotional confrontation on the bridge and took Nick away from
us. Because we were getting too close to the truth, Roz. We were rumbling
their game. I said they were lying when they left me instructions to destroy
that book, Roz, and I meant it. Don’t you see? If they simply wanted to
block up Nick’s mind-leak, why didn’t they just kill him, like I was
considering doing? Why go to all the bother of keeping him alive if the
simple answer to blocking up the hole in Nick’s mind was to destroy that
mind?’
Mike had something there, Roz realised. Why hadn’t they killed Nick
already?
‘Maybe that’s what they’re doing now,’ said Roz, unable to quell her
fears. ‘Maybe that’s why they’ve taken him. Maybe they’re about to murder
him, literally as we speak.’
But no, she thought, forcing herself to think rationally. Why would they
do that, she theorised, when Mike himself was becoming desperate enough
to carry out that very job? Why deny their ultimate scapegoat the chance of
wrecking his own career and leaving them entirely blameless for Nick’s
demise, unless they were instead intent upon keeping Nick alive? Maybe
Nulltec were indeed up to something nefarious, like Mike was implying.
Maybe they wanted the Randyman running loose inside Nick’s brain . . .
Which brought her right back to square one. Had the Randyman itself
taken Nick away?
‘What do we do?’ she asked, trying to calm her fears. Because all the
options were crap.
‘I guess I could phone Valesco’s office and see where they’re keeping
him?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Mike. They’ve kidnapped Nick for a reason. They’re
hardly going to tell you or me where he is now, are they?’ Roz straightened
her skirt, which she realised was still hitched up over one knee.
‘There’s nothing else for it,’ she said. ‘I have to go in again. I have to go
back inside the Phantascape. If I’m going to find Nick anywhere, it’ll be in
there. I have to search for Nick inside that terrifying dream-world, even
though it’s the last thing I want to do.’
‘I’ll come with you this time,’ said Mike.
She nodded, even though she knew that was potentially disastrous.
The truth was, she did need some help this time. Because the last thing
Roz Bloom wanted in the whole world was to be trapped inside the
Phantascape with Randy Streak, the dream-demon known as the Randyman,
alone . . .
 CHAPTER FIVE
‘Plunging’

But Roz was alone. As she found herself standing once more on the fringes
of the bleak and gloomy Dankton Park, she realised amid the wet, autumnal
bleakness that Mike Crisis was no longer beside her as he’d said he would
be, and that again she’d made the transition into the Phantascape
unaccompanied.
Had she fallen asleep by accident as Mike was wiring her in? No, he’d
wired himself in first, hadn’t he? Then realised he required his own head to
be unwired in order to be able to wire in Roz’s head, so had disconnected
himself again, before wiring her in first. Was that when she’d fallen asleep?
No, she’d waited for him, hadn’t she? Watched him as he wired in his own
head again and lay down on the bed beside her, vowing to go into the
dream-world together. And, now that she was able to brush off the initial
drowsiness of dream, Roz remembered calmly accepting the sleeping drug
he’d handed her; recalled them holding each other’s hands, counting down
to ten, then swallowing their pills together.
So where the hell was he?
The cold October breeze blew about her, chilling her vitals as heavy
raindrops struck the shoulders of her overcoat. Roz stared intently across
the park, keeping her eyes on the distant tower blocks she was headed for,
instead of the grim concrete toilet block on her left, which she was
nevertheless constantly aware of. She had to get across the park as quickly
as possible, before the Randyman could make another unwanted
appearance. But Roz knew that was easier said than done while she was
wearing a pair of uncomfortable high-heeled slingbacks.
Her gaze fell suddenly upon a brand-new pair of trainers sitting directly
beside her on the nearside edge of the park. They looked eerily
incongruous, Roz thought. As though they’d been waiting here especially
for her. Why, they were practically inviting her to try them on, weren’t
they? And they looked really cool, too. Factory-laced white pumps with
pastel-yellow banding and air-cushioned ice soles. If Roz put these shoes on
now, instead of her usual slingbacks, she might make it across the park to
those tower blocks in record time.
Quickly, Roz swapped her shoes over, ditching the slingbacks, and strode
forward across the park in her new trainers at a determined pace.
She paused frequently on the way to admire them, raising each shoe
upward so that she could mentally absorb the customised tread pattern on
each outsole, growing mildly chagrined that they were already stained with
the sodden mud she’d been trudging through.
Then, realising she was wasting precious time, Roz turned her attention
back to the park in front of her and immediately caught sight of a familiar
form some distance ahead. A creepy-looking figure in a brown mackintosh
and trilby, standing stock-still on the far side of the green.
The Randyman . . .
‘Like my gift, Roz?’ it said.
Damn it, thought Roz. That brand-new pair of trainers had been a trick. A
trap designed to slow her progress, rather than speed it up. If only she’d
ignored the shoes. If only she had kept her painful slingbacks on instead,
rather than swapping them over for these replacement trainers and
subsequently pausing at frequent intervals to take in their amazing look and
feel. She should have resisted temptation and continued to march at a
determined pace across Dankton Park. Then she might already be standing
safely and soundly on the far side of the green.
After all, that had been her intention, hadn’t it? To make her way across
the green in record time in order to avoid any further encounters with that
mischievous flashing dream-demon previously known as Randy Streak.
Only now did Roz realise that by putting on this brand-new pair of trainers
he’d gifted her, she’d actually lost whatever benefit in time she’d hoped to
gain by setting forth across the park at an increased speed, and had instead
only added to the time expended, crushing in one fell swoop all hope she’d
once had of reducing her journey time in order to ensure her safe and snag-
free migration across the park.
The damned irony of it . . .
Now where could she run? Behind her was that huge bank of green cloud
again, through which she’d entered the Phantascape. She could try running
back through it, but could she really risk losing her way inside a green mist
with Randy Streak in hot pursuit? And there was no point trying to hide
from the dream-demon in the whirling smoke, either. No doubt somewhere
on that U-bended neck, there’d be a convenient gas cock that would
effectively close off the supply of smoke, exposing her again in an instant.
And she couldn’t run to her left, either. Not if she wished to avoid the
toilet block that was Randy’s home. So where the hell could she run?
Then it struck her. This was a dream, wasn’t it? So why, then, couldn’t
she simply fly?
She looked up, preparing to launch herself into the heavens, and saw
Randy Streak floating directly above her, mackintosh billowing, toilet
plunger poised in one hand.
‘I control the dream, Roz,’ whispered the dream-demon, its voice
sounding as if it were coming from inside her own head. Either that or
being piped through a semi-blocked industrial vent stack. ‘I’ve come for
you . . . Come to take you back . . .’
‘Back where?’ said Roz, dreamily. Was she going mad, or was there
something vaguely attractive about those bronze gate valves protruding
from the Randyman’s abs? Something mildly titillating, even, about that
gleaming hose bib (also known as a common outdoor faucet) visible now in
the area of Randy Streak’s groin (which the demonic toilet plunger had
otherwise been covering up)?
‘Yes,’ murmured Roz. ‘I will come with you . . .’
‘Then grab my nipples,’ said the Randyman, revealing two short pipes on
its chest that would ordinarily connect couplings and other fittings.
Roz did what the Randyman commanded, and found herself ascending
into the air, enveloped in the stained folds of the dream-demon’s grubby
beige mac. It smelled of wastewater and pipe-cloggings, and part of Roz
wanted to let go. Wanted to drop from the Randyman’s pipes and fall to a
blissful, sewage-free death. But then the dank smell of unwanted overflow
began to lift, and Roz sensed that the fluid dripping from the Randyman’s
flesh pipes was grey water only, i.e. used water emerging from common
non-toilet fixtures, as opposed to a typical bog-based leak.
It – he – was changing, Roz realised. The further Randy Streak got from
the horrors of his past, from the grim circumstances of his toilet-based
demise, and the closer he got to Roz, who’d convinced Nick to give the
dream-demon a sympathetic back story, the less stinky he was becoming.
 Could it be true, Roz wondered. Could the Randyman be seeking some
form of spiritual salvation through her?
‘Come with me, Roz,’ he whispered, his voice sounding again like it was
inside her own head, yet smoother this time, as if piped now through some
modern industrial power flush system.
‘Come to my house . . .’
They were descending, Roz realised, back to the ground below. As the
sides of the dream-demon’s mackintosh flew apart, Roz finally saw the
building they were heading toward.
It was the lonely, run-down public toilet block, only now it was decorated
with clumps of sodden dandelions and leftover bunting from the 1977
Queen’s Jubilee.
‘Come with me, Roz . . . Live with me . . .’
The Randyman took Roz by the hand and led her in the direction of his
former maintenance cupboard.
‘I’ll get all this re-floored,’ he added, ‘and order an extra chair for you.’
‘No . . .’ murmured Roz. She knew she had to get out. Knew she had to
find Nick, but something was stopping her. Something speaking to her from
deep inside. Something she couldn’t help but feel toward this poor,
misunderstood council-employed toilet attendant. It was pity, she decided.
Because all he’d ever wanted was to keep the pipes in this particular gents’
facility clean and unblocked. Keep them flushed through so that he could
get home for a well-earned steak-and-kidney pie for one in front of a
flickering television set before the inevitable 1 a.m. emergency council call-
out requiring him to go and disperse yet another nocturnal loiterer.
And they’d called him the sleazy one. Mistaken him for a crusty-clawed
cubicle-clinger. Blamed Randy Streak himself for being a perennial urinal
gland-shaker.
It wasn’t fair!
But this . . . Roz thought, examining the interior of Randy Streak’s
maintenance cupboard. The buckets, the piping, the exact spare plunger
supply the gang of youths had used to pump the alleged bog-loiterer to
death; the stagnant mops, the broken radio that now merely hissed, the
nicotine-stained spot-the-ball collection plastering the entirety of one wall.
She couldn’t face this, could she? Was this to be Roz’s lot? Married to a
dream-demon in some nightmarish khazi that could never be pumped dry?
Was this the happy future she’d planned when she first began her career in
horror paperback publishing? Spending the rest of eternity as Randy
Streak’s undead lavatory-scrubber assistant? Maybe he’d expect her to
service his pipes as well? Maybe he’d ask her to pump his float ball or even,
God forbid, wrench his floor flange?
No! thought Roz. I can’t. I don’t want this life. As much as I feel pity for
Randy Streak, I don’t want to vent his rim hole.FN46
‘No . . .’ said Roz, woozily. ‘I don’t want to live in a public gents’,
Randy.’
‘You don’t, Roz?’
‘No, Randy, I don’t. I really don’t.’
‘But this is my home. My life. My death . . .’
‘I know, Randy, but . . .’
‘All this can be yours too, Roz Bloom. Your home. Your life. Your death .
. .’
‘Like I say, Randy, I really don’t want . . .’
‘Listen to it,’ hissed Randy, holding his plunger aloft, over his head, as
though searching for the sound. ‘Listen to its vibration . . . Listen to the
calling of the water hammer.’FN47
The Randyman looked down again at Roz, his nose, chin and lips
dripping with overflowing grey water. ‘Come, Roz . . . Come and mop with
me . . .’
‘No . . .’ she whispered again, but knew that her will was slowly being
sapped. Maybe it was that now strangely alluring scent of the dank spillages
surrounding them, or perhaps it was the hypnotic drip of wastewater leaking
through the perishing closet flange, threatening the structural integrity of
the backwater valve (which should, in theory, prevent disposed sewage
from re-entering a building), or maybe it was the dizzying pattern in that
swirling, mildew-covered ceiling overhead, or the looming presence of the
temporary septic tank housed beside Randy’s makeshift lunch area, but Roz
no longer felt she had any power to resist. She no longer felt she possessed
sufficient energy to counter the Randyman’s dreamlike gaze, nor the
strength of will needed to oppose the terrible suck and pull of that
horrendous industrial-strength plunger of his.
She was trapped – forever – in the Phantascape. A prisoner, for all time,
of the dreaded Randyman.
The pen . . . It was her own mind whispering to her . . . The fountain pen .
. . To wake you up . . .
 Then she remembered she’d handed that very pen to Mike . . . and Mike,
being Mike, had forgotten to hand it back.
It was useless to resist. As the dream-demon leered in toward her for a
last embrace, Roz wondered which of the cubicles next door she should
tackle first, and made a mental note to ask Randy if he had any small-size
Marigolds . . . And then she felt a sudden pain in her leg.
‘Ouch!’ Roz yelled, looking down. A stream of blood was running over
her right knee. Then she felt another stab. In her arm this time. She raised
her elbow to examine the wound and felt a similar pain in her other arm.
‘Ow!’ she yelled again.
Suddenly, her surroundings started to fade. The Randyman, for a brief
moment, appeared to disappear inside the folds of his mackintosh,
becoming almost immaterial. Then, too, the stained wall-tiling of Randy’s
own public convenience began to vanish as Roz fought to contain the pain
she was feeling in all her limbs now. Here came another! And another! Hell,
she was being stabbed, she realised. Stabbed numerous times in her arms
and legs. ‘Get off me!’ Roz yelled.
‘Hey, I’m not doing a damned thing, lady,’ said Randy, an offended look
on his face. ‘I only plunge people’s souls to Hell.’
‘Then who the hell is stabbing me?’ Roz cried.
‘Stabbing you?’ roared the Randyman, confused, as Roz finally
understood what was happening . . .

. . . and woke suddenly in the laboratory again, to find Mike Crisis jabbing
her own fountain pen repeatedly into her arms and legs.
‘Bugger off!’ screamed Roz.
‘I’m sorry, Roz!’ said Mike, still jabbing, before remembering he’d just
been told specifically not to jab her. ‘I didn’t know how else to wake you.’
Roz snatched the pen from him and ripped the wires from her bald cap.
‘Where the hell were you?’ she snapped. ‘I was all alone in there again,
with Randy Streak coming after me with that fetid plunger of his.’
‘I ran out of sleeping pills the second you went under, Roz,’ Mike said. ‘I
tried looking around for more, but whoever stole Nick’s body from the lab
also stole the contents of my sleeping pill collection. I rang a local
pharmacy but they weren’t getting fresh deliveries until next Wednesday, by
which time I imagined you’d be almost completely dead. So I knew I had to
act fast. After grabbing lunch-on-the-go, I began thinking through all the
possible ways I could go about waking you up. You see, whoever had taken
Nick’s body, and my sleeping pill collection, had also taken my sleep-
suppressant pill collection. Then when you started screaming and moaning
in your sleep, I knew I had no choice, so I started stabbing you with the pen.
And thank God I did, right?’
‘I guess,’ said Roz, feeling her wounds. ‘Hand me some antiseptic cream
and some plasters, would you?’
Mike nodded, rising to oblige her, when suddenly Roz screamed.
‘The others!’ she yelled, looking at the dreaming sleepers who lay around
them. ‘Look, Mike! They’re all dead!’
Mike looked, his eyes shifting from Roz’s bed to those of her fellow
experiment volunteers. Roz was right. All of them were in an advanced
stage of decomposition. He grimaced in sudden embarrassment, and looked
up again at Roz.
‘I . . . I . . .’
‘Didn’t you even notice?’ snapped Roz. ‘Didn’t you smell them starting
to rot? And rotting pretty quickly by the look of things?’
‘Of course I knew,’ he said, grinning suddenly at her. ‘After all, I killed
them, didn’t I?’
Mike tore aside his lab coat to reveal a brown mackintosh concealed
below it, then calmly ripped off his own face. As the mask of waxy flesh
fell away, through it appeared the dripping, bloodied visage of the
Randyman.
‘I’m here to flush you out!’ the dream-demon snarled. ‘Like I’ve flushed
out all these others.’ The Randyman pointed with its plunger at the various
dead dreamers, then angled its weapon at Roz.
‘So you won’t marry Randy, after all, huh?’ it snapped. ‘When all along
you’re the one who’s supposed to care for me. Unclog me. Twist my angle
stop. You, who were meant to be the anode rod in my corroded water tank.’
‘I can’t, Randy! I just can’t!’
‘Then DIE!’ screamed the Randyman, slamming its plunger into Roz’s
heart . . .

*
. . . which beat wildly as she woke suddenly from sleep again, to find Mike
Crisis firing several bolts of electricity through her body from a pair of
defibrillator pads.
‘Thank God you’re awake, Roz!’ he screamed. ‘Now stand well back!’
Mike slammed both pads on Roz’s chest again.
‘No, Mike!’ she screamed, then felt her internal organs convulse wildly
as two more harsh jolts of electricity shot through her nervous system. ‘I’m
the patient!’ she yelled, when he’d finally stepped back again.
‘Of course!’ Mike said, slapping his own head with one of the
defibrillator pads, giving himself an electric shock as well. When he’d
finally recovered, he looked over at Roz again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Never mind,’ Roz said, sitting herself up in bed, her heart pumping
wildly like she’d been marinated in caffeine. ‘What’s happening to me,
Mike?’
‘You’ve been dreaming,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know how else to wake you.’
‘What about my fountain pen?’ she said, still trying to recover from the
electric shock.
‘I lost it, I’m afraid, Roz. I must have dropped it in someone’s colon
when I was assisting with some rudimentary bowel surgery an hour ago.’
‘How long have I been out?’ she asked.
‘Three days.’
‘Three days? Why weren’t you in there with me?’ she snapped.
‘I had to attend to these,’ he said, indicating the circle of empty beds
lying around the laboratory.
Roz couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed yet. The other volunteers in the
Phantascape project had completely vanished.
‘What happened to them?’ she asked, fearing that the dreamers
previously surrounding her were now dead somewhere, just as they had
been in the terrifying events of her recent nightmare.
‘The second you went under, they began to scream, Roz. All of them
went into sudden cardiac arrest. I had to forget following you in and try my
best to save whoever I could. Unfortunately, my best wasn’t good enough.
Nowhere near good enough.’
‘How many survived?’ asked Roz.
Mike sighed, and held up four fingers. Then slowly lowered them, one by
one. ‘None.’
‘None?’
 ‘Everyone inside the Phantascape programme appears to have died of
fright, Roz. And that’s not all.’
‘What else?’
‘When they died, they were no longer the people they said they were.’
‘What do you mean, Mike?’
‘They’d changed, Roz. Their histories, their backgrounds; even the
personal address details inside their wallets. They’d become completely
different people.’
‘What kind of completely different people?’
‘The completely different people,’ Mike said slowly, preparing Roz for
the worst, ‘who once murdered Randy Streak.’
 CHAPTER SIX
‘Waking Nightmare’

Roz checked the identities of the deceased a third time. Whoever they’d
been previously, there was no mistaking who they were now. Each of the
names she and Mike found on their various driving licences and bank cards
matched the fictional names of those youths who’d murdered Randy Streak
in Nick’s original novel.
‘You know what this means?’ said Roz.
‘No idea whatsoever,’ said Mike.
‘It means that Randy Streak – the Randyman – has now escaped from the
world of dream into our reality. He – or it – either followed me through, or
followed one of these poor wretches. We’re now living in a waking
nightmare, Mike. A major catastrophe has turned into a calamitous
catastrophe.’
‘All on my watch . . .’ Mike mumbled.
‘All on your watch. Except you weren’t really watching, were you,
Mike? You were more sort of blindly ignoring events spiralling downward
into total disaster around you.’
‘I guess that’s true, Roz.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
He bit his lip for a moment, pondering, then fixed her with a determined
look. ‘I don’t know.’
‘There’s no way I’m going to be travelling back inside the Phantascape
again,’ said Roz, ‘and there’s no point, anyhow. The Phantascape has now
come to us. In any case, I couldn’t see hide nor hair of Nick in there. The
Randyman must have either hidden him somewhere or, God forbid, sucked
his soul out already and plunged Nick straight down into Hell.’
‘I still say we should kill him,’ said Mike.
Roz looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
 ‘Well,’ Mike said, sensing this could be a chance, at long last, to prove
himself. ‘Nick’s physical form must still exist in reality somewhere. His
vital signs are still showing on the data readouts. Look.’
He handed Roz a sheet of paper with some squiggly lines on it that she
didn’t understand.
‘These squiggly lines tell me that he’s still wired into the Phantascape; it
could mean his physical presence is crucial for the Randyman’s ability to
survive inside this realm. Otherwise, surely the Randyman would have
destroyed him first, Nick being chief instigator of this entire Randy Streak
tragedy. Nick’s body must therefore be a link. A bridge, if you will,
between worlds.’
‘But for how long, Mike? Maybe Nick’s body’s here, but what if his
soul’s already gone?’
‘Look, Roz,’ said Mike, moving close to her. ‘We’re in the middle of a
calamitous catastrophe, right?’
Roz nodded. ‘I guess.’
‘Meaning we’re going to have to make some tough decisions in order to
save Stalkford from the evil machinations of this terrifying Randyman.
You’ve said yourself that we’re now living in a waking nightmare, where
the world of dream and reality are combined as one.’
‘Correct, Mike.’
‘Well, the way I see it, if Nick’s body is still wired into the Phantascape,
it must mean his physical existence is crucial to the Randyman’s ability to
survive inside this realm. Nick’s body is, therefore, a link. A bridge, if you
will, between worlds. I suspect that even if Nick’s soul has been plunged
and sent down to Hell, his body is still integral to the Randyman being able
to remain in our world and haunt our own reality. Meaning that the mind-
hole in Nick’s brain, that gap to another dimension through which his
imagination is leaking, is still vital to the Randyman’s success. Otherwise
Nick would be dead already, which he’s not. According to this data.’
Mike showed Roz the printout again, which she still didn’t understand.
‘So,’ she said, theorising herself, ‘if we can somehow find out where
Nick’s body’s been hidden, and are able to block up his mind-leak as
originally intended, we may yet have a chance to save the world from the
Randyman?’
‘Exactly. Or we can simply shoot Nick in the head.’
‘No!’ Roz snapped.
 ‘Yes!’ Mike Crisis snapped back at her. ‘If Nick’s soul is gone, Roz, then
his body’s just a channel. If we blast his head into a million tiny fragments,
the hole to another dimension will no longer exist, and neither will the
Randyman. Then Stalkford can return to normality once again, and I’ll have
turned a calamitous – nay, disastrous – crisis into a barely manageable one.
With your help, of course.’
Roz didn’t like it one bit. She couldn’t believe that Nick’s soul had been
sent to hell already, and his body left as an unwilling conduit. She wouldn’t
believe it! If they could somehow find Nick’s body, wasn’t there some way
in which they could reverse the process? If the hole in Nick’s mind opened
up into other dimensions, couldn’t it open up inside Hell as well? In which
case, couldn’t Roz travel into Hell and save Nick again, like she’d once
saved him from the Prolix?FN48
Again, Roz’s mind returned to that other quandary she’d been pondering
previously. If normality really could be restored through simply destroying
Nick’s physical frame, then why hadn’t Nulltec killed him already in order
to seal up Nick’s mind-hole? Maybe Mike was right – maybe they were
keeping it open deliberately. Maybe Nulltec hadn’t ordered him to destroy
that copy of The Randyman via letter, after all. Maybe it was Nulltec who’d
been lying, not Mike. And maybe they’d sent Roz into the Phantascape not
to seal up Nick’s mind-hole, like they’d said, but to have her destroyed
instead by a Randyman they already knew was running loose inside.
If that was true, then what were they really up to? What possible plan
could they have which involved releasing a terrifying dream-demon into our
own worldly reality? Especially when Nick himself might have easily done
that for them for a small fee.
Something didn’t add up, and if Roz was to stand any chance of saving
Nick, and the world, from whatever evil plan Nulltec had up their sleeves,
she had to locate Nick’s body. But that was likely to be just as tough as it
had been in the Phantascape, now that the Phantascape was itself appearing
all around them.
‘We’ve got to find him,’ said Roz.
‘And kill him,’ added Mike.
‘No, Mike. We’re not killing Nick Steen. Because if what I think might
be happening is indeed happening, then the only chance we have of
restoring Stalkford to normal and ridding the world at large of both the
Randyman and the Phantascape is to find Nick’s body and somehow drag
his soul back from Hell. Then together, all three of us can close that door in
Nick’s mind-gap, lock it up behind us and throw away the key.’
‘Fine, Roz,’ said Mike. ‘We’ll play things your way. For now . . .’
Roz sensed a new bearing to Mike Crisis. He was speaking with
something like confidence, at last. But if it was confidence, Roz knew deep
down it was misplaced confidence. Arrogance, even. Now she’d need to
keep an even stronger eye on Mike Crisis, she realised, aware that at any
point he could send them all spiralling down once more into disaster.
‘You’ll do as I say, Mike,’ said Roz. ‘Because if you don’t, and you
screw this whole thing up again, I’ll make damned sure you’re known
henceforth under a different name. Not Mike Crisis anymore. No, I’ll sort
the entire thing by deed poll. If you dare screw this up, I’ll be officially
changing your name to Mike Catastrophe.’
The doctor gulped, sweat brimming immediately on his brow.
‘Understood,’ he said.
‘I hope so, Mike. I really hope so.’
‘So do I.’

The glass bridge leading into the main building was no longer a
glass bridge. It was now thickly glazed and frosted in numerous
areas, resembling the non-transparent glass-block windows of a
run-down gents’ toilets. Roz and Mike made their way carefully
across it, Mike stopping once again at one small area of clear
pane.
‘It’s nothing but a muddy field now,’ he said gloomily, staring through
the glass at the ground below. Then he looked upward. ‘And look at those
clouds in the sky,’ he said. ‘They’ve gone all grey and moody.’ He stopped
suddenly, catching sight of something else in the distance. ‘And those tower
blocks weren’t there before.’
‘It’s Dankton,’ said Roz. ‘Well, a dream-version of Dankton. It’s entered
our real world, where admittedly the real-life Dankton actually exists. So I
guess there are now two Danktons.’
Mike sighed in exasperation. ‘This clash of reality and dream looks like it
could become mightily confusing,’ he said, scratching his head.
 ‘And it’s bound to get far worse,’ Roz cautioned as she reached out for
the door handle allowing access to Nulltec’s central building. It was now
the shape of a conventional toilet flush.
‘You know, the longer the Randyman maintains its damp grip on our
mortal plane, Mike, the more reality is going to start resembling the
eternally-soiled, slippery interior of a run-down public convenience. We’re
in the Randyman’s nightmare now, Mike. Don’t forget that. Randy Streak
drowned in a swelling block of pumped effluence and wants to turn our
world into a septic tank, too.’
She pulled the flush handle and the door to the main building opened,
accompanied by the sound of rushing water somewhere behind.
The corridor beyond was dank, with small damp patches overhead
dripping with liquid from the floors above.
‘And you think we should try Valesco’s office first?’ Roz asked.
‘Well, his fiendish medical mind is behind every nefarious plan
undertaken by Nulltec,’ said Mike. ‘So if Nick’s comatose body is hidden
somewhere in the building, he’ll know where. It’s going to be difficult,
though. I’ve heard he double-locks the door to his office. And also slides
over a security chain.’
Roz nodded, sombrely. It sounded like an impossible task. Doomed,
even, but they had to try. If Valesco had information on Nick’s whereabouts,
and it sounded like he might, given he was in sole charge of Nulltec’s secret
and ethically unsound business practices, then they had to attempt breaking
in. Even if that meant buying a wrench from B&Q.
Roz stopped her thoughts right there. Who was she fooling? Before long,
there would hardly be a DIY convenience store left in the entire county that
wasn’t filled solely with parts dedicated to the plumbing industry. And the
last thing one did with a network of plumbing inside an immersion
cupboard was start bashing at it with a damned wrench. No, buying a
wrench from B&Q was completely out of the question.
‘Where is Valesco’s office?’ she asked.
‘Up here,’ Mike replied, pointing straight ahead. ‘Then a lift down to
floor thirteen.’
‘Are you sure, Mike?’ asked Roz, aware that Mike’s sense of direction
was scant at best.
‘No,’ replied Mike.
 Roz sighed. Well, one direction was as good as any, she decided.
Stepping forward, she could see that the world of Randy Streak’s nightmare
was changing the place permanently, turning the white, shining walls into a
stained, damp shade of moody grey, thick with mulch and suspicious-
looking flecks of green crust.
‘Here’s the lift,’ said Mike, jabbing what had once been a button on the
wall before them. The protuberance burst, sending a jet of oily, yellow-
coloured ooze dripping downward on to the floor below.
‘Remind me to call the maintenance department,’ said Mike. ‘I’ll do it
once we’re inside Valesco’s office. Just in case this minor lift-based crisis
turns into a potential major one in the near future.’
‘Don’t tempt fate, Mike,’ said Roz as the elevator door slid open. The
interior of the lift stank of rotting river.
‘After you,’ said Mike, motioning Roz forward.
The floor below her feet squelched as she entered the elevator. She
turned, glaring at Mike, who cautiously followed her inside.
Roz reached out and pressed the button for floor thirteen, which likewise
burst like a yellow boil. She grabbed hold of Mike instinctively as the lift
lurched into sudden motion.
‘You can’t call maintenance about the state of this lift, Mike,’ she said,
despairingly. ‘You might as well call security while you’re at it and
handcuff ourselves in the meantime.’
‘Of course,’ said Mike, ‘They’d be on to us straight away.’
‘We’ll just have to hope the condition of this lift improves, rather than
deteriorates,’ said Roz, ‘if we’re to have any hope of using it again.’
‘Blimey, Roz. I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘Then start thinking, Mike,’ snapped Roz. ‘Nick’s survival depends on us
thinking before we act.’
Mike shrugged her away, forcing Roz to balance herself against the boil-
infested wall. She couldn’t blame him, she guessed. She had snapped at
him. But now she’d probably lost her last ever chance of grabbing Mike’s
arse.
Oh well, she sighed inwardly. Perhaps it was never meant to be.
The lift stopped with a sudden jolt, sending them once again into each
other’s arms.
Roz dropped her hand immediately and seized Mike’s arse.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he said.
 ‘Sorry,’ said Roz, releasing it slowly. ‘My mistake.’
You fool, Mike, she thought. You hapless fool.
‘We’re here,’ said Mike, bursting another boil to open the lift, realising
with bitter regret that he’d just blown his final chance of reciprocating Roz
Bloom’s unexpected-yet-not-particularly-displeasing arse-fondle. ‘Floor
thirteen.’
The door swung open to reveal an entire corridor filled from floor to
ceiling with plumbing outlets.
‘Valesco’s office is at the far end,’ said Mike.
As they walked along the corridor, Roz bent her head to avoid the hissing
vents and steaming gas valves, knowing full well whose influence had put
them there.
Grasping another flush handle in the far wall, Roz yanked downwards,
hearing the distant sound of a busted flush. The door into Valesco’s office
wouldn’t budge.
‘Looks like you were right, Mike. Double-locked, security-chained and
now a busted flush to boot.’
‘Stand back,’ said Mike, pulling out a Magnum .357 revolver.
‘Where did you get hold of that?’ Roz asked, amazed.
‘My parents gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday, Roz. Apparently, it
worked out cheaper than driving lessons.’
‘They bought you a big gun?’
‘I was always asking for a big gun, Roz. Maybe it’s because I wanted to
be a big gun, one day. Who knows? But whatever the real reason was, my
parents bought me a big gun.’
‘Lucky for us.’
‘Exactly,’ said Mike, aiming the barrel at Roz. ‘Can you look into this
thin end and see if there’s a bullet inside?’
‘I’ll take the big gun, Mike,’ said Roz, grabbing the big gun from Mike’s
hand. He was about to protest, but at the touch of Roz’s hand, which she
deliberately kept in contact with his for longer than would normally seem
appropriate for such a big gun-snatching movement, Mike acquiesced.
‘Sure, Roz,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’m not the one best suited to handling a
big gun, after all.’
‘I’m sure you’re best suited to handling other big things, Mike,’ Roz said,
fruitily.
Mike looked confused.
 ‘Like big buns, say?’ Roz arched her eyebrow upward once more.
Mike still looked confused.
‘Or big dumplings?’
He shook his head, now looking vaguely panicked.
‘Oh, forget it, Mike,’ said Roz, turning her attention back to the door.
That was the very last time she was going to bother.
Mike slapped his head, finally understanding, as Roz levelled Mike’s big
gun and opened fire at the flush handle. The mechanism exploded, blasting
open the door in a shower of grey water. A second shot destroyed the
security chain, which croaked and bubbled like a sucking plug, and then she
and Mike were inside Valesco’s office.
‘Here,’ she said, tossing the big gun to Mike. It was completely rusted
now, as though it had been sitting under a dripping tap for decades.
‘What the heck?’ cried Mike. ‘My parents bought me that big gun for my
sixteenth birthday.’
‘Remember, the Randyman’s in control of the Phantascape, Mike,’ Roz
said. ‘It must have heard those shots and tried to stop us using the big gun
again. It’s bound to be on its way here, even as we speak. We need to move
quickly.’
Roz rummaged through the filing cabinets while a subdued Mike
searched Valesco’s desk.
‘Ward Nine,’ said Mike, flicking through some internal memo sheets. ‘In
the basement level.’ He paused, a look of disbelief and hurt upon his face.
‘They’ve moved him to another dream ward.’
‘A dream ward?’ said Roz, looking up from the filing cabinet.
‘That’s what it says here. I thought my dream ward was the only one
Nulltec had. But according to this, they’ve been running another one at the
same time, without my knowledge.’ He looked at Roz. ‘I thought they’d
given the job of overseeing the Phantascape project to me alone, Roz. Yet
all along there’s been another dream ward operating at the same time.
Why?’
‘Something strange is going on, Mike. Read this.’
Roz handed him a letter she’d found filed in a folder of recent
correspondence between Nullman and Valesco.
‘“A reminder, Dr Nullman,”’ Mike read. ‘“To leave a copy of The
Randyman inside the locker of Mike Crisis. As I’m sure you’re aware, he’s
bound to screw up this final job like all his other failed tasks. With luck,
he’ll read the book aloud like the sissy he is and fill Nick Steen’s
subconscious mind with thoughts of the Randyman, thus easing the dream-
demon’s escape into the Phantascape.” Why, Roz? What does all this
mean?’
‘They set you up, Mike,’ Roz replied, as tenderly as she could. ‘They
knew all along you’d turn a potential crisis into a major crisis. They wanted
you to fail. They wanted you to release the dreaded Randyman into our own
reality.’
‘But why, Roz? Why?’
Roz’s brow furrowed as she fought to work it all out. There had to be a
reason. Some dastardly purpose or plan they weren’t yet party to. But
whatever the thing was, it would have to wait. Because at that precise
moment in time, Randy Streak burst through the wall.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Dream Demon’

Or at least, Randy Streak’s head burst through the wall. A head swollen to
such monstrous size that there was little room for any other part of Randy
Streak’s anatomy. Which Roz, at least, was grateful for.
‘I’ve come for you, Roz,’ leered the dream-demon.
‘Greetings, I’m Mike,’ said Dr Crisis, proffering one hand in the
direction of the apparition’s monstrous mouth.
‘You fool, Mike!’ screamed Roz from across the room. ‘That’s Randy
Streak!’
‘Who?’ said Mike, confused.
‘The dream-demon!’
‘Nick Steen’s dream-demon?’
‘Yes!’ bellowed Roz. ‘The Randyman!’
‘Jeez!’ yelled Mike, taking evasive action at last. ‘I really should have
put two and two together!’
As Mike hurled himself behind a nearby desk, the jaws of the Randyman
bit down, tearing a large gap in the wall its head was jammed through, a bit
like a great white shark eating through the bottom of a boat, if the boat were
standing vertically on its head and the shark had the head of a dream-demon
instead.
‘If you don’t come to me, Roz,’ hissed Randy Streak, between mouthfuls
of brick, ‘I’ll come to you.’ Its voice was watery now, as though it were
being piped back through a broken backwater valve. Jets of fluid burst
through sudden holes in the wall as it bit down again. Then the entire room
began to disintegrate around them, fountains of liquid shooting up violently
through the floor.
‘Grab hold of something, Mike!’ shouted Roz, from her position behind
Dr Valesco’s filing cabinet.
 ‘Do you mind if I grab you, Roz, like you grabbed me in the lift?’ Mike
yelled back.
‘That doesn’t look achievable in our current situation, Mike, and even if
we were able to grab hold of each other, now’s not really the time for
potentially feeling each other up. So I recommend you grab hold of
something close by, instead.’
‘But what if I can never grab you again, Roz?’ Mike cried out.
‘If you don’t grab something pronto, Mike Crisis,’ yelled Roz, ‘you’ll not
grab anything at all in the world ever again, least of all me!’
Suddenly a jet of grey water shot through the nearby wall, striking the
side of Mike’s head.
‘Mike!’ cried Roz as she watched his body fly across the room like a
speeding jet plane. Then the helpless doctor slammed against an opposing
torrent of grey water and was flung backwards at an angle toward a
towering geyser of brownish backflow. Mike’s body struck this third
fountain hard and was immediately catapulted upwards again, eventually
coming to a precarious halt at the frothing head of this unholy spring.
‘Mike!’ Roz yelled up. ‘Are you alright?’
‘I think so,’ said Mike, ‘but I’m going to need a change of lab wear, that
much is for sure.’
God, he was brave, thought Roz. And funny, too, in a way. If only he
wasn’t such a hapless loser.
‘We’re a bit closer to each other now, Roz,’ cried Mike from his position
high above her. ‘Maybe I can leap down from up here, right into your
arms!’
‘We’re not remotely closer to each other, Mike!’ yelled Roz. ‘Now for
Pete’s sake, keep your mind on getting out of here in one piece, rather than
engineering ways in which we can somehow get physically close enough to
each other for a surreptitious fondle.’
The Randyman burst forward again, forcing its head further through the
hole in the wall.
Roz turned in horror to find the dream-demon chomping its way across
the floor of Valesco’s office, making its way toward them. Now the room
itself was starting to fill with murky-looking unidentifiable fluids.
This is the way Randy Streak died, thought Roz, grimly. Now it’s doing it
to us. The Randyman is taking its revenge . . .
 ‘Come with me, Roz,’ said the Randyman, its words clear again, as if its
pipes had suddenly cleared, even though its literal mouth, Roz saw, was still
crammed to the gills with floor tiles. ‘Come with me to my cubicle and we
can de-clog the facilities together!’
‘No!’ screamed Roz. ‘Never!’ She looked up at Mike, still balanced on
the top of the massive spray of water. ‘Jump, Mike!’ she yelled to him.
‘Jump into my arms!’
But before the feckless doctor could launch himself downwards from the
towering geyser, the Randyman clamped its jaws down on another mouthful
of flooring, thrusting its powerful head forwards with each fresh bite.
Then the room broke in two.
Roz fell backwards as her half of Valesco’s office tipped away from the
other side. She glimpsed Mike falling from his fountain of water to the
ground on his teetering section as the pressure below the geyser finally gave
way.
When the severed halves of Valesco’s office finally settled, Roz crawled
forward on all fours, peering over the edge of the severed floorboards
before her. Below she could see nothing but stars. Millions of stars in a vast
sky of impenetrable black. Yet stars that, from this distance, looked a sickly
yellow in hue. Surely stars should gleam and sparkle? Yet these were dull
and greasy in appearance. Then the black seemed to lighten slightly, until it
became a dull brown and, in horror, Roz realised that she wasn’t looking
down upon some cosmic vision of black infinity after all, but instead the
slimy, ordure-spattered stains of Randy Streak’s mackintosh.
A creature, Roz realised. The Randyman was now a gigantic creature
moving below them. One swollen to monstrous, terrifying proportions. As
she watched, the demon below began to move, and she realised its vast
body was slithering forward. Then she glimpsed something else. A gigantic
wooden rod, moving alongside the brown slick of its vast, greasy coat,
ending in the gigantic circular rim of a vast rubber attachment.
The Randyman’s plunger. Its colossal, swollen, soul-destroying plunger!
‘We have to get out of here, Mike!’ cried Roz, scrabbling over the slowly
cracking floor of the suspended half-room that had once formed Dr
Valesco’s private office. ‘I don’t know what’s going on down there, and
perhaps it’s still all a dream, but the Randyman seems to be mutating into
something even worse than the basic dream-demon it first appeared to me
as. It’s now some form of bloated water-grub that thinks absolutely nothing
of eating up an entire medical facility in an effort to get its teeth into us. I
suggest we find a way out of our respective part-suspended half-rooms
asap.’
She watched as a pair of human hands clawed over the precipice on the
other side.
Then Mike’s head popped into view. ‘We seem to be suspended in mid-
air, Roz, each in a teetering half-room over a vast cosmic abyss, with the
giant head of a dream-demon known as the Randyman eating what’s left of
the connecting floorboards between us.’
‘I just said all that, Mike. You don’t need to explain it all again to me as
though I somehow haven’t yet fully processed such a complex and logic-
challenging visual image. I’m right here and can see it, too. But that’s not a
vast cosmic blackness below us. It’s the dirty, water-stained rain mac of
Randy Streak, which is connected to the vast head of the demonic
Randyman slowly making its way back towards us.’
‘Come with me, Roz!’ cried the Randyman, its huge eye staring at her
through the vast gap in the floor. Then the dream-demon expelled a burst of
raw sewage from its open throat, soaking the entire room.
‘You won’t go with it, will you, Roz?’ yelled Mike, his face suddenly
sad. ‘You won’t leave me for the Randyman?’
Another burst of sewage exploded from the Randyman’s mouth as it
belched up a couple of undigested floorboards.
‘No, Mike,’ cried Roz. ‘Though technically we’re not even going out
with each other yet. But just in case we do decide to become better
acquainted at some point, I’m coming with you. Not Randy Streak.’
‘Then leap over to my side, Roz,’ Mike yelled back. ‘Because on my half
of the former office of the sinister Dr Valesco, I can see a stretch of corridor
running along the floor through the open door behind me, which, if memory
serves, leads directly back to that elevator system which can take us straight
down to Ward Nine in the basement level, where Nick Steen is currently
being held – remember?’
The leap was dangerous, Roz knew, but it was her only chance. Unless
she wanted to spend an eternity with a gargantuan-sized Randy Streak
dream-demon.
‘I’ll take a good run-up,’ Roz said, rolling backwards against the slanted
wall behind her in order to give herself a decent charge forward.
 Then, having gathered her remaining strength, Roz bounded forward
from the wall in the direction of the broken edge of flooring immediately
ahead.
But as she did so, Roz’s half of the room began to tip upwards even more
steeply, and as the row of filing cabinets she’d been rifling through
moments before came crashing back towards her, Roz realised something
large and heavy had struck her half of the room from below.
She felt her strength wane as the floor she was running across continued
to angle upwards like the sudden, steep rise of a hill. Then she realised there
was no chance at all of her scaling its peak.
‘Roz!’ Mike shouted down at her, staring over the precipice from his
side. He watched her slide backward again in the half-room below him,
toward the rear wall, as what little office equipment remained there tumbled
back with her, collecting in a jumbled heap around her as she fought in vain
to thrust herself upwards.
‘It’s no good, Mike!’ cried Roz. ‘Something’s pushing against my side of
the room from below.’
And then that something appeared in the crevice between them.
‘I can see it!’ yelled Mike from his side of the chasm. She could hear him
now, and his words chilled her to the bone.
‘It’s the plunger, Roz! The Randyman’s giant, oversized demonic
plunger! The massive rubberised rim is pressed hard against the floor of
your half of the room. You must leap to me now, Roz, or you’re going to get
sucked downward into the bowels of Hell when the dream-demon decides
to yank it back again the other way. Which it’s literally just about to do!’
Roz tried thrusting her body forward again, but it was no good. The
forces of gravity were working against her, and there was no way she could
make it up the sloping floor to the edge of the precipice now.
‘It’s no good, Mike. You’ll have to go on alone. Without me!’
‘No, Roz! I can’t.’
‘You must, Mike! And you will! You alone can save Nick Steen and
Stalkford now. You alone can drop down into that corridor below you on
your side of the half-room of Dr Valesco’s former office and head towards
the elevator shaft we used earlier, press the button for the basement floor
and then make your way on to Ward Nine. You alone can find Nick, and
bring him back from the jaws of Hell. If that’s where he currently is!’
 ‘Thinking about it, Roz, if you do get sucked down into Hell on your
side, then we might still be able to hook up again when I get there, too.’
‘I don’t think so, Mike. Because if I get sucked down into Hell via this
latest incarnation of the Randyman, I very much doubt it’ll allow you and I
to hook up in any way at all. In fact, I think it’d destroy us both before it
would let any kind of hooking up happen!’
‘Then this is the end, Roz,’ Mike cried from above. ‘The end of
everything!’
‘Yes, Mike!’ Roz was fighting back tears. ‘Unless you can think of
anything else? But as far as I’m concerned, I must confess I’m pretty much
stumped for an alternative!’
There was a sudden pause as the giant tilting motion of the room
appeared to reach its apex, then a terrifying industrial squelching sound
erupted as Roz felt the floor below her slowly contract, as if tugged from
below amid the maelstrom of some giant cosmic vacuum. Death was nigh
then, Roz figured. The Randyman was about to yank Roz’s world to Hell
with that mountainous plunger.
‘I can’t let it happen, Roz,’ cried Mike, from somewhere above her. ‘Not
on my watch. And with you dead, what’s the difference anyway?’
‘What the hell are you drivelling about, Mike?’ Roz bellowed, preparing
herself for the final, dizzying descent.
‘I’m saying that I’m going to rid us of this darned dream-demon once and
for all, Roz. I’m going to find Nick Steen in Ward Nine on the basement
level below me . . .’
‘Yes, Mike?’ answered Roz, feeling her stomach suddenly start to lurch
as the ground below her began to shift. ‘And what then?’
‘Then, Roz, I’m going to kill him!’
‘No!’ shrieked Roz as the floor under her shot downward with one final
tug of the Randyman’s plunger. For a moment she was airborne, entirely
weightless against the sheer force of her half-room’s downward trajectory.
Then she was shooting down again, so fast that the glimpse of Mike she
caught as she descended began almost immediately to recede, one hand
clutched uselessly over the edge of the precipice as Roz flew immeasurable
distances below him.
‘Don’t . . . kill . . . Nick!’ she yelled as she descended at speed into the
depths of an unknown abyss, but if Mike Crisis heard a single word of
Roz’s frantic plea, she would never know.
 For she was plunging ever downward, now consumed by the pull of the
Randyman’s contracting plunger. She heard the burst of exploding masonry
as the floor she was crouched upon plummeted downward through multiple
levels of concrete flooring.
In desperation, realising that in mere seconds she might be obliterated as
the falling half-office slammed into whatever lay below it, Roz yanked open
the drawer of the open filing cabinet she’d previously been rifling through,
and frantically climbed inside. Luckily, once she was ensconced within it,
the sliding drawer held fast against the side of the wall it was rammed
against, cushioning Roz within like a mouse in a matchbox, until, finally,
but inevitably, the collapsing half-room struck its final obstacle.
There was an almighty splash, and Roz sensed the cabinet she was
cocooned within sink suddenly into a soft and pliant surface. Then the
drawer eased forward on its sliders, released by the sudden disappearance of
a neighbouring wall. As the filing cabinet opened, letting in a flood of
water, Roz suddenly panicked, more from seeing a floating wad of tissue
paper entering the interior of her protective space than any fear of imminent
drowning. Realising it was time to move, Roz kicked herself outwards,
freeing her body from the protective metal life-buoy.
Then she was swimming upward, through a pool of what she hoped
wasn’t wastewater, but suspected probably was, kicking her legs
desperately against the soft, vaguely nauseating touch of unidentified
matter, until at last she broke through the surface.
And found herself inside a long, dark tunnel.
Oh, God, she thought. Am I in stuck in a sewer? Have I somehow found
myself falling into Nulltec’s wastewater system by mistake? Will I ever get
clean now?
She looked around. As far as she could see, there was no trace of the
remains of Dr Valesco’s office, unless what was left of it had sunk far below
her, into those murky depths from which she’d just emerged. Glancing
above her head, Roz was shocked to see that there was no evidence at all of
any gap or hole in the ceiling. No evidence that she’d recently plunged
through it from somewhere far above. Then how had she got here? And the
tunnel floor below her. That ocean of overfill. Why, it was nothing now but
a small stream. Roz could even stand up in it now, the water level barely
covering her two feet.
 She looked ahead and saw that the tunnel led toward what seemed to her
to be a distant room, lit from within by a row of cold overhead strip lights.
The constant echoes of dripping water from the tunnel ceiling masked the
sound at first, but soon Roz’s ears managed to pick out a noise coming from
inside it.
As Roz strained to hear against a sudden cacophony of flushing pipes,
she finally distinguished what sounded to her like a low, Sid James-style
cackle, echoing along the tunnel in front of her.
‘Hey, Roz,’ said the voice of the Randyman, piping through the tunnel
from the room ahead. ‘So you found my place, after all?’
Before she could turn and run the other way, a sudden flood of rushing
water below Roz’s feet swept her up in its current and sent her sailing
helplessly along the tunnel floor towards the Randyman’s house.
And whatever was waiting for her inside.FN49
 CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Flushed’

Roz tried in vain to brace herself as she rushed at speed along the tunnel.
She suspected from the occasional glimpse of mismatched check and
backwater valves that it was in fact a water pipe she was being funnelled
along, one that had recently been re-plumbed from an outlet into an inlet
duct; an uncanny mirroring of the way in which Randy Streak had died, she
considered grimly, as she rushed headlong within the heavy torrent.
God alone knew what awaited her in the room she was currently speeding
toward, but one thing was certain. Roz was now part of that murderous
septic flow that had once blasted backward into Randy Streak’s workplace,
filling the entirety of his lonely khazi block with back-borne spew,
drowning the doomed maintenance man in an unholy silt before the sheer
pressure of his overflowing cubicle-house caused the roof of the entire toilet
block to explode upwards into the air, showering Dankton in a towering
torrent of recirculated wastewater.
Before Roz could take in the sheer enormity of that terrifying thought,
she was at the mouth of the pipe and bursting into the room amid a flood of
frothing chemical spume.
As she came to a halt on the tiled floor, Roz looked around her, half-
expecting the Randyman to be waiting right there. But she was alone inside
a room that looked very much to her like a ladies’ toilet, only one that was
hideously befouled.
Myriad unknown stains marked each wall, and graffiti was scrawled
across every available space. Roz didn’t have to read the words to know
what messages these contained. The illustrations themselves did that. She
nudged open one of the cubicles and reeled backwards from the sight
within. An unflushed toilet, full to the brim, and alongside it, something far,
far worse. What had once, many years ago, started its life as a toilet brush,
now resembled something closer to a medieval mace, spiked with poisons
so foul it might have been employed as a rudimentary siege weapon.
Roz stood up and made her way over to one of the hand-blowers in an
attempt to dry herself off. She punched the button but nothing happened.
She tried the next blower along. It appeared to work at first, until Roz
realised in horror that the air was perpetually cold, and would be almost
entirely useless as a drying device.
She then turned toward what she assumed were some adjacent sinks, fear
mounting within as she moved ever closer to the three oval white basins
hanging vertically against one wall. Inside each was a small plughole, yet
all three were clogged with what looked to Roz like an unholy thatch of
unidentifiable matter. A mixture of human hair and Wrigley’s gum,
alongside what claimed on its brightly coloured plastic surface to be some
sort of device for preventing congestion, but which had somehow slid
vertically to one side of the pan, so that it was singularly failing to come
into any contact at all with the plughole it was meant to be covering.
God, thought Roz, in sudden recognition. So this was a urinal. And from
the foul state of the floors and walls, and the sharp, acrid stench of urine
that seemed to be emanating from almost every conceivable space (bar the
toilets specifically installed to contain it), Roz knew that the place she’d
been thrust into against her will was not a ladies’ toilet at all, but a public
gents’.
She’d known they existed, of course. But she’d never known, nor once
suspected, that they’d be this bad.
And the situation, she realised as she shrank back from the soapless
dispensers and foully flecked mirrors, was only getting worse. Because the
very water upon which Roz had shot into the room was still flowing inward
from that hole in the wall, covering the floor now in several inches of fluid.
And rapidly rising . . .
I’m going to drown in here, thought Roz. I’m going to drown like Randy
Streak drowned. In an ocean of re-flushed waste.
Suddenly a cruel Sid James, Wilfrid Brambell and Stacey Solomon-like
laugh sounded through the room. It was coming from another pipe, up by
the ceiling – from which, Roz now saw, yet more wastewater was flooding
in!
Or had it come from this other one? Roz wondered, noticing there was
now a third pipe jutting from the wall. And now a fourth . . . And a fifth!
 ‘Jesus!’ cried Roz, aloud. ‘There are loads of pipes!’
‘Say hi to my pipe organ, Roz!’ snarled the voice of the Randyman, its
large eye staring in again at Roz through one of the holes. ‘Wanna play?’
‘Let me out of here, Randy,’ said Roz, affecting anger, though in reality
she felt like she might need to make an emergency trip to one of the
cubicles as a matter of urgency, if there was a single one left that wasn’t
overflowing. ‘I’ve been good to you,’ she continued. ‘I gave you a
sympathetic back story when no one else at Clackett cared one way or the
other, least of all Nick himself.’
‘Then you killed me, Roz,’ roared the Randyman. ‘You drowned me in
wastewater.’
‘That’s technically true, but I’m also the reason the reading public lapped
you up, Randy, pardon the pun. I’m the reason you went on to star in a
further sixteen sequels.’
Suddenly the rushing water pumping through the numerous wall pipes
stopped. There was a strange silence, interrupted only by the echo of
constant dripping.
‘I’m your best friend, you see?’ said Roz, her voice bouncing off the
befouled floor tiles. ‘In fact, I’m your only friend. My editorial
recommendations alone gave you life.’
She waited for a reply, but received no answer. She looked up and saw
that the Randyman’s eye had vanished from the hole above her through
which the dream-demon had been staring at her. Unsure what was
happening, Roz waded across the floor toward one of the other holes,
wondering if the Randyman had changed position.
But this hole, like the other hole, was completely black.
‘Hello?’ she called through the dark, festering pipe. ‘Randy Streak?’
Again, nothing but silence and the slow, persistent drip of various pipe
inlets.
Then a deep reverberation pounded Roz’s ears as the walls and floor
under her shook like the initial tremors of some devastating earthquake
headed her way.
The water under her feet began to lap to and fro, then Roz lurched
sideways, her body upended by some invisible force she could sense but not
yet define. A row of bricks in the wall behind her crumbled backward in a
sudden spray of dust. Concrete crumbled from the collapsing partitions as
Roz suddenly realised what was happening. Randy Streak’s eye had
vanished from the hole, alright, but the blackness in its place was anything
but the darkness of an internal pipe wall.
No, the blackness was that vast, sucking wall of vulcanised rubber again.
‘Not more!’ shouted Roz. The retreating bricks bulged suddenly forwards
from the wall in a shower of exploding dust as the immense vacuumed
pressure of the Randyman’s giant plunger gave way to the dream-demon’s
powerful forward thrust.
Roz flew across the room as the side of the toilet block caved in beneath
a tidal wave of unholy wastewater.
For one terrifying moment, Roz was completely submerged. Grimly, she
held her breath, terrified that she might never rise to the surface again; that,
as a result of that foolish slice of editorial advice she was now living, nay
dying, to regret, she was about to die the same hideously cruel death as
Randy Streak, drowning in an unholy tide of regurgitated waste . . .
As Roz flailed wildly in the murky depths of whatever the collective
residents of Dankton had last physically expelled, she prepared to meet her
maker. Ironically, this was precisely what the Randyman was doing too, in
that Roz was technically its maker, but she didn’t think it would get the
joke, so elected to let it pass.
Unable to hold her breath for a second more, Roz struck for a surface she
knew could not be there, and did her level best to die before her brain’s
survival instincts finally forced her mouth open.
But her brain refused to play ball.
As her jaws finally parted and a surge of unholy water prepared to flush
itself through her system, Roz’s mouth instead took in a lungful of air.
She gasped, sucking in glorious oxygen as the water level subsided
rapidly about her.
She opened her eyes and saw that the wall against which the Randyman
had forced its plunger had now completely collapsed inward.
The escaping waste, Roz noticed, was flowing away in small streams
through the broken bricks, passing in muddy rivulets toward a distant field
of sodden grass.
Roz looked up at the tower blocks looming over the area of neglected
parkland she was now facing. A red, moody sun hung low on the horizon,
slowly giving way to a heavy bank of grey clouds moving in from the east.
She was in Dankton again.
 The Phantascape had almost swamped reality entirely, then. And now it
looked like she was going to be trapped in this place forever. But as she rose
groggily to her feet, a hand clasped her shoulder gently from behind.
‘Live with me, Roz,’ whispered the Randyman in her ear. ‘Together, we
can plunge our way down to Hell . . .’
She sensed the Randyman’s plunger at her shoulder, pointing forward at
the field before them, where a great fissure had opened up suddenly in the
ground.
Into it, slowly at first, yet gradually gathering pace, fell everything
around her: the bricks of the toilet block, the park benches, the trees. Even
the tower blocks began to topple and sway in the distance, bending toward
her, all of it flowing with the released water down into that deep chasm
before Roz’s eyes, rushing downward in a cascading waterfall of gathered
shit, right down into the very bowels of Hell.
‘Is that where Nick is?’ Roz asked, thinking aloud. She didn’t really
expect an answer, but if Nick was in Hell, she might yet stand a chance of
saving him – or failing that, at least she’d have some company while
flailing for eternity inside a flushed torrent of backed-up waste-matter.
‘Nick Steen is dead,’ whispered the Randyman. ‘Mike Crisis just shot
him.’
‘No!’ said Roz. ‘He can’t be. I mean, if Nick’s dead, surely you’ll be
dead, too?’
‘Is that what Mike Crisis told you?’
Roz thought for a moment. It was indeed what Mike Crisis had told her.
‘That guy’s full of shit. I don’t need Nick Steen to survive, lady. I’ve
already sucked up his soul. I’m your world now, Roz. The Phantascape is
here for ever. This is reality. Nick Steen is dead, and it’s just you and me,
baby.’ The Randyman clasped her shoulders with both hands. ‘You and me,
Roz, old girl. Forever . . .’
She felt herself gliding forward, toward the great crack in the surface of
the earth, which would plunge her down, down, ever downward, into the
kingdom of eternal damnation. She’d failed. Nick was dead. Mike Crisis
had killed him, after all. Whom should she blame now? Mike, for turning a
colossal crisis into a gargantuan crisis? Nick, for creating this entire disaster
by sleeping with a cursed typewriter and dreaming up something as foul and
morally objectionable as the Randyman? Nulltec, perhaps, for continually
operating without a moral or ethical code? Or maybe herself, for being so
preoccupied with slingbacks and sales reports that she hadn’t seen this
particular dilemma coming? For giving this most odious of dream-demons a
reason to seek out supernatural vengeance against a cruel and unforgiving
world?
Maybe all of us are to blame, Roz figured. Maybe there had never been
any path open to Mankind other than slipping down to Hell in a flood of its
own piss and shit. Then, without warning, she felt the pressure on her
shoulders suddenly lift.
At the same time, she heard an unholy shrieking close behind her. Then
that shriek was itself joined by another shriek, and Roz realised she would
have to turn round fully in order to discover what the hell was going on.
And something was definitely happening, because she was no longer
heading toward that sprawling fissure in the ground.
Bracing herself, Roz turned round.
And found herself staring into the face of Barbara Nullman. But not the
Barbara Nullman Roz knew. For this Barbara Nullman had the lower body
of a giant salamander, its reptilian skin entirely black, save for a generous
peppering of foul, yellow spots.
Somehow, Nullman, and her dreaded Nobel Prize-winning extracted R-
Complex,FN50 had entered the nightmare world of Randy Streak.
And whatever this foul thing that Nullman had turned into was, it was
currently battling with a network of extending pipework that was slowly
wrapping itself around her newly-metamorphosed body.
Roz caught sight of a brown trilby and the hint of a stained mackintosh
among the web of plumbing surrounding her, and realised that the
Randyman and the Nullman salamander demon were in the thick of some
terrible fight to the death.
‘It’s time for you to die, Randy Streak,’ hissed Nullman, confirming
Roz’s previous suspicion.
‘Who let you into my domain?’ countered the Randyman, doing its best
to encase the Chief Head of the Nulltec Corporation in an intricate network
of sprawling dip tubes and self-connecting branch vents.
Behind the warring beasts, Roz caught sight of the public conveni-ence
once serviced by Randy Streak that she’d so recently burst out of. To her
surprise, it no longer resembled the public convenience once serviced by
Randy Streak at all. Instead, it now looked like a medical laboratory of
some kind, and Roz had the uncanny feeling that she was caught between
two opposing dream-worlds, one ruled by the terrifying dream-demon
Randy Streak, and the other ruled by yet another terrifying dream-demon
formed from the body of Barbara Nullman and that of the human brain’s
dreaded R-Complex, Mankind’s deep-rooted reptilian instinct also known
as the basal ganglia or basal nuclei, containing the brain stem, limbic region
and the amygdala, housed deep inside the human brain – which Roz knew
from her studies of Nick’s previous visions assumed the form of the arse-
end of a salamander.
But how was all this possible? Was the world now formed entirely from
an overflowing Phantascape? Did reality no longer exist at all? Had
Nulltec’s dangerous dream experiment resulted in a complete and total
breakdown of rationality and logic, engulfing the entire globe in a terrifying
storm of imaginary monsters culled from the world of ultimate nightmare?
One far worse than those denizens of the unconscious mind previously
unleashed into reality by the hole to another dimension currently housed
inside Nick Steen’s own brain?
It certainly looked that way, thought Roz.
But whatever the reality was right now – and who knew what it might be
in another minute’s time – Roz knew she had to escape the violent clashing
of these horrifying demons in front of her. Behind her lay Dankton and that
hole into Hell, which she knew would be her permanent home if the
Nullman Demon lost this titanic struggle.
Yet if somehow the Randyman were to fail instead, then Nullman would
no doubt move on to Roz next. Roz had to run while she still could, and
find some way back into the corridors of Nulltec – if those corridors were
even real anymore. She had to find out what Nullman’s plans really were
regarding the Phantascape project, and the terrible grip it now held on what
had formerly been known as reality.
As the beasts before her thrashed and roared, Roz got down on her knees,
preparing to crawl past them if possible, hoping to reach a door she could
see had appeared in the wall opposite, from the part of reality now
controlled by the Nullman Demon.
But it was impossible, she realised. No way could she get past those
roaring Hell-beasts without being crushed, stomped or eaten. No way could
she flee through the contested ground of these warring colossi.
Then she heard the voice of the Randyman, whispering, deep inside her
head.
 ‘A gift, Roz. Another gift, for you . . .’
And suddenly the door in question was beside her.
The Randyman had saved her, Roz realised. Gifted her a convenient door.
Perhaps this was merely an ostentatious demonstration of its power; an
audacious display of the control it was determined to wield over this newly
contested Phantascape, but the Randyman had granted Roz the path to
freedom. Calmly, she waited for both demons to lunge at each other again;
then, satisfied that they were sufficiently distracted, she yanked open the
door and ran through.
Forgetting to close it behind her . . .
 CHAPTER NINE
‘Lucidrix’

Roz turned back, remembering that she’d forgotten to close the door behind
her, and rectified her mistake.FN51
Ahead of her lay a long corridor, which once more resembled the interior
halls of Nulltec. Roz knew her immediate surroundings might change form
again at any moment, however, depending on which of the demons behind
her eventually emerged triumphant.
Deciding she must find the elevator shaft again as quickly as possible,
Roz sprinted along the path ahead, reached a crossroads, then turned right
down another corridor. She followed a sign marked ‘Lift’ and located the
elevator shaft at the far end. She began to feel calmer again, seeing that the
door of the lift was metallic in structure, like those she’d been used to
before they’d started becoming slimy and grease-slicked in appearance.
She slipped inside, waiting for the elevator doors to shut behind her, then
froze in sudden terror. Instead of the button panel on the wall beside her, the
lift’s mechanism seemed to be controlled by a chain-flush dangling at
shoulder-height. Roz felt a splash of water on her head and realised fluid
was dripping from the elevator’s ceiling above her.
So Randy Streak’s influence was still at large, then. His nightmarish
world was still affecting reality on Nullman’s side of the Phantascape.
Evidently the two were still fighting it out.
Roz looked up and noticed that the maintenance panel in the top of the
lift was open, through which water was leaking. Beyond the gap, she could
see the interior of the main elevator shaft. It stretched upward for what
looked like miles, and what she’d assumed might resemble a hollow cuboid
leading up and down toward consecutive floors instead looked like the
internal fittings of an industrial water pipe. She heard a noise directly above
her, and caught sight of someone’s leg moving on the roof of the lift.
There was a person up there.
 Probably a maintenance operator, Roz guessed, hearing the sound of
clanking tools and someone doing repairs. She was about to call out for
them to hurry things up so that she could descend urgently to the basement
level, when she glimpsed the foot in the gap again and realised it wasn’t a
foot at all.
Those small circles of light she’d glimpsed in the darkness above her
weren’t the studded glint of hobnails on a worker’s boot. She could see, as
they slowly descended into the lift itself via the open hatch, that they were
instead yellow spots. Yellow spots on a smooth, black surface. As the thing
lowered itself further into the shaft, dangling in front of her like a baited
worm, Roz realised they were the markings of a salamander’s tail.
She screamed as the thing darted right, angling itself toward the hanging
flush handle. She watched as the tail curled round the chain like a snake,
and yanked downward.
All of a sudden, Roz heard the loud whooshing of a triggered flush as a
wave of water plunged down from above, straight through the gap in the
roof above and into the lift.
So the dream-demons were ganging up on her, were they? Taking a wee
break from hostilities to join forces against her? Maybe that meant they
both knew Roz was a potential threat.
That gave her renewed courage, at least. And she’d need it, as all at once
the elevator began to drop with the downward torrent of water, falling for
what felt like an eternity. Roz’s stomach turned as she bore the full brunt of
the deadly plunge, realising this is what it must be like to be flung, against
one’s will, over the top of Niagara Falls or a similar massive waterfall,FN52
until finally the lift juddered to a sudden, violent halt.2
But water was still pumping in through the hole in the hatch above her,
and as Roz struggled for breath amid the never-ending torrent of water, she
caught sight of the salamander’s tail still reaching in from the roof above,
moving now from the pulled flush chain towards the interior of the lift
itself, curling downward towards where Roz now floated, submerged and
struggling for air.
She was in what now to all intents and purposes resembled a cramped
shark cage, yet the beast itself was inside the cage with Roz (said beast
being in this case a giant salamander’s tail, as opposed to a murderous great
white). As she fought to avoid the demon’s darting tail, Roz could have
kicked herself. Why hadn’t she remembered to bring her lady’s handbag
with her during her search for Nick? For as long as she could remember,
she’d always carried a snorkel and diving mask with her in case of an
emergency just like this one. And yet like a fool, today of all days, she’d
left everything in the lab beside her bed when she’d entered the
Phantascape.
Perhaps the Randyman might will it into being, like it had willed that
convenient door through which Roz had escaped. But she couldn’t afford to
wait and find out. The Randyman might have ceased granting any more
gifts. Might even have lost its titanic struggle with the Nullman Demon. No,
Roz had to think on her feet (technically off her feet, as she was floating),
and she had to do it fast. She whirled around in the submerged elevator car,
kicking outward with her heels, trying her best to avoid the slithering tail as
it curled and slid from one side of the lift to the other. Seeking her, sensing
her, hunting her. Attempting to locate her.
How long could Roz last, she wondered. Fortunately, she’d grown up in a
Cornish pearl-diving community, so could hold her breath for almost sixty
seconds,FN53 yet thirty-seven seconds of those had already passed, meaning
she had only twenty-three seconds’ worth of withheld oxygen left to spare.
Twenty-two if she counted down from now. Or twenty-one from now.
Horrified that she only had twenty seconds’ worth of withheld oxygen left –
nineteen now, and now eighteen, in fact sixteen by the time she’d finished
thinking this part of the imagined sentence in her head (possibly fifteen or
even fourteen by now) – Roz realised that time was fast running out.
Then she felt herself being squeezed. In horror, she sensed something
wrapping itself around her body, cutting off her vitals and reducing her
ability to withhold her breath even further, meaning that she probably now
only had around five seconds of withheld oxygen left before she absolutely
needed to breathe in air again.
But there was little chance of that happening. Even if she no longer had
the problem of water to contend with,FN54 the sheer weight of the
salamander’s tail crushing her, dragging her across the floor of the elevator
car and bashing her against the walls in an effort to stun her into
unconsciousness, would mean that she couldn’t take in a breath of oxygen
anyway.
Again, she kicked herself for forgetting her lady’s handbag, from which
she might have drawn something sharp like a spare stiletto heel with which
to cut feverishly away at the demon’s tough, reptilian skin. But, like I say,
she’d left that in the lab of Mike Crisis.
As Roz looked up at the surface of the water overhead, gaining one last
tantalising glimpse of the open vent in the roof above, where precious air
might yet exist, she knew that her time was up, and prepared herself to die.
With that knowledge came a strange, eerie sense of déjà vu, as if she had
somehow been here before.FN55 Then, she recalled that she had indeed been
in a similar situation to this before, and decided to stop worrying so much
about the déjà vu element.
All at once, the pressure on Roz’s body lifted and she felt the salamander
tail loosening around her. At that exact moment, the level of the water
inside the lift also began to drop. As the fluid sank lower, past Roz’s face,
she gasped loudly, drawing in a deep lungful of oxygen. She could see now
that the lift door had opened up on the basement level, releasing the water
out on to the floor beyond.
Roz glanced up at the ceiling of the lift and saw the dangling tail of the
salamander reaching over once again for the chain pull. Realising she had
mere seconds left before the lift once again began to fall, Roz forced herself
up from the lift floor and lunged through the open door into the corridor
outside, just as the salamander’s tail yanked the chain a second time. Roz
listened for a moment to the lift plunging even further downward amid a
rush of cascading water, down into the undiscovered depths of some
unknown subterranean dream-world.
Well, Roz reflected. The minor lift-based crisis she and Mike had
encountered earlier had certainly turned into a major one in that near future
they’d both feared.
As if in answer to her thoughts, she heard a familiar-sounding voice call
out from behind.
‘Roz!’
She whipped round to see Mike Crisis emerging from a nearby room.
‘Mike!’
‘Thank goodness you’re here, Roz. I’ve found Nick.’
‘I know,’ said Roz, immediately becoming moody. ‘And I know exactly
what you’ve done to him, too.’
‘Do you, Roz?’
‘Yes, Mike. You’ve killed him, haven’t you? The Randyman told me all
about it. You’ve killed Nick Steen and now we don’t stand a chance in hell
of reversing the flow of the Phantascape.’
‘I didn’t kill Nick, Roz. Well, okay, I tried, I’ll admit, but my gun kept
jamming.’
‘You tried to shoot him with that rusty gun?’
‘So what if I did? It doesn’t matter, anyway, because it seems that even in
my own dreams I’m unable to avert a crisis. There I was, with all the means
at my disposal for solving a major crisis once and for all, and instead I’ve
simply gone and prolonged the crisis. Nick Steen’s still alive and so is the
Randyman, and the dream-demon’s getting stronger all the time.’
‘Except that it’s not, Mike,’ said Roz, getting to her feet at last without
Mike offering any help. ‘I’ve just left Randy Streak battling with a similarly
terrifying dream-demon partly formed from the body of Barbara Nullman.
And when I last looked, it looked like she was holding the upper hand.’
‘Nullman? In the Phantascape?’ Mike was having difficulty processing
Roz’s words. ‘Then that explains it.’
‘Explains what?’ asked Roz.
Mike’s features set into what one could have described as a ‘determined’
look, but which Roz instead chose to interpret as a ‘misguided’ one.
‘Come with me, Roz,’ he said, ‘and I’ll show you.’
He led her along the basement corridor, which was green in colour,
unlike the sterile white environment of Nulltec’s upper corridors, and
through a door marked ‘Ward 9’.
‘Through here is Valesco’s second office,’ whispered Mike as he and Roz
moved into a lengthy-looking outer laboratory. Various specimen jars lined
each wall, some containing items Roz chose to look away from, then looked
back at because she couldn’t contain her own twisted curiosity. Things like
five-tailed gerbils, bat-babies, floating eyes on stalks (some wearing
spectacles), nerve-people (mainly eyes again, but attached to a ‘body’
consisting only of floating nerves) and the customary tank of mutated
offspring labelled ‘Potential Circus Act’.
Mike led her round these, through a door on the far wall and into a
second laboratory. Here he turned to face her, placing one finger over his
lips.
‘You need to be really quiet now,’ he said, loudly.
‘Shhh!’ said Roz, hushing him.
Mike screwed both eyes shut in embarrassment and slapped his own
forehead. ‘God, so sorry,’ he whispered.
 ‘Where are we?’ Roz mouthed.
‘We’re outside Dr Valesco’s second office.’ Mike pointed to another door
in the wall behind them. Adjacent to it was a horizontal pane of glass, lit
from within by a pink tinge, clashing eerily with the sickly pale green of the
laboratory’s intended colour scheme.
‘That’s another observation room,’ Mike said, pointing to the distant
glass. ‘Valesco’s second office opens into it from within. He’s at work in
that second office at the moment, but have a look at what’s in there.’
Mike got down on his knees and ushered Roz to follow him. Together,
they crawled over to the glass pane and raised their heads over the edge of
the ledge. In the room beyond, with their heads wired up to the usual banks
of monitoring equipment, lay the sleeping bodies of Nick Steen (still fully
erect) and Barbara Nullman.
‘Nullman’s wired into the Phantascape, too?’ asked Roz.
‘You said so yourself, Roz. Dr Valesco’s wired her in. This is where they
moved Nick to. I guess so that we wouldn’t be able to find him and wake
him up before Nullman had a chance to put her own nefarious plan into
action.’
‘Her own nefarious plan?’
Mike ducked his head downward, indicating to Roz that she should do
the same. He shuffled himself along the wall toward the door leading
directly into Valesco’s second office. Roz followed. Drawing up outside the
door of Valesco’s second office, Mike turned back to face her.
‘I snooped in there earlier while Valesco was attending to Nullman,’ he
said. ‘And saw these on his desk.’
He extracted a small object from his lab coat pocket and handed it to
Roz. It was a bottle of tablets.
‘Sleeping pills,’ Roz said, sighing. ‘Presumably so that both Nullman and
Nick will sleep when required to. Hardly a great revelation, Mike.’
He shook his head, smiling at her, then turned the bottle round. ‘You
didn’t read the label, Roz.’
She scrutinised the medical name but didn’t recognise it. Maybe they
were stronger tablets than the ones she’d been taking.
‘What are they?’ she asked.
‘You won’t find them in any conventional medicine catalogue, Roz. Let’s
just say that.’
‘Why?’
 ‘Because these are new pills, Roz. Secret pills. Invented by Dr Valesco,
here in his lab. These are Lucidrix pills.’
‘Lucidrix?’
‘Pills which allow you to dream lucidly. Lucid dreaming, Roz, is the
ability to control your dreams while you’re dreaming.’
‘I know what lucid dreaming is, Mike. That feeling when you’re
suddenly aware you’re inside a dream and, in that very moment of
revelation, are able to control the dream. But surely that’s a myth?’
‘Not anymore, Roz. Nulltec have developed a pill that will allow you to
control any dream you have. Right now, I imagine Nullman is controlling
hers.’
‘Of course,’ said Roz. ‘That’s why she’s appearing inside the
Phantascape.’ Then a terrifying thought struck her. ‘Oh, God,’ she said,
clutching Mike’s arm. ‘It’s even worse than we feared, Mike.’
‘Even worse than we feared? I don’t know, Roz. I’m pretty fearful, to be
honest.’
‘Worse than you could ever imagine, Mike. Because if what I think is on
Nullman’s mind is, in fact, on Nullman’s mind, we could now be facing a
danger far more evil and destructive than even the Randyman itself.’
But before she could explain what that was, the lock to Dr Valesco’s
office snapped loudly in their ears and the door behind them flew open.
 CHAPTER TEN
‘The Pink Death’

‘I’ll take those, young lady,’ said Valesco, holding out his hand for the
bottle of pills. In his other hand, the doctor held a strange-looking gun. The
barrel, aimed at Roz’s chest, consisted of a medical syringe, the interior of
which glowed with an unspecified pink liquid.
Roz maintained her grip on the bottle.
‘Hand them back to him, Roz,’ said Mike. ‘I don’t know what that pink
liquid is inside that syringe pistol he’s holding, but I doubt it’s raspberry
flavoured.’
Roz nodded, sensing that for once in his life, Mike had spoken a degree
of sense. She handed the bottle of Lucidrix back to Dr Valesco.
‘It’s my fault,’ said Mike, bitterly. ‘I should never have made
us stop directly outside the door of Dr Valesco’s second office for
a strategic chat. We should have discussed things by the
neighbouring observation window instead, where he would have
been slightly less likely to hear us. Good old Mike Crisis does it
again.’
‘It was indeed a stupid idea, Dr Crisis,’ said Valesco, ushering Mike and
Roz through the open door, into his own lab. ‘Nevertheless, I’ve been
watching you for some time. I deliberately let you steal these pills, knowing
full well you’d only return here once you’d located Miss Bloom, so
desperate were you to impress her with anything remotely approaching an
act of competence. But you were captured on my closed-circuit television
monitors the moment you broke into my first office upstairs. Of all the
stupid ideas.’ He grinned, ushering Mike and Roz further into his private
laboratory.
‘But then you’re full of stupid ideas, Dr Crisis,’ he continued. ‘Like
reading a novel about a dream-demon aloud to an author whose mind
currently houses a portal to another dimension, and who was at that very
moment simultaneously wired into an experimental dreamscape project
connecting the minds of others inside a shared psychic reality. That was
particularly stupid.’
He ushered Roz and Mike at syringe point still further into his second
office, which, like every other room in Nulltec, was adorned with complex
scientific equipment and an endless array of technical gadgetry. They
moved past the door, which Roz realised must lead to the observation area
where both Nullman and Nick were sleeping, and found themselves
standing at last against the far wall.
‘You let him do it, though, didn’t you, Dr Valesco?’ said Roz. ‘If you and
Nullman knew the Phantascape project was so dangerous, why didn’t you
terminate the entire programme when we spoke to you about the
Randyman’s escape? No, you had other plans, didn’t you? Other plans
which involved Dr Nullman entering the Phantascape herself under the
influence of those experimental lucid-dreaming pills we stole and then
handed back to you. Pills that allow the swallower to control their dreams,
and, now that the Phantascape has entered reality itself, reality itself.’
‘Those pills,’ said Valesco, ‘are going to win Dr Nullman another Nobel
Prize.’
‘Nullman, or you?’ asked Roz, hoping she might be able to stir up some
competition between the two scientists, as Nick had done previously in an
imaginary confrontation between the two.FN56
‘On the contrary, Miss Bloom. Dr Nullman and I will be presenting
Lucidrix to the world scientific conference together. So there’s no hope of
you dividing and conquering us on that front. I supervise the experiment
here at Nulltec, while Dr Nullman operates her side of the project “from the
beyond”. One day soon, with proper funding in place, we will establish an
overseas facility in the beyond the beyond. But for now we are operating in
perfect sync, largely via walkie-talkie.’
‘That’s not the plan and you know it,’ said Roz, fighting to pin down the
slippery scientist. ‘Nullman’s making changes to the Phantascape already,
thanks to these ruddy Lucidrix pills of yours.’
‘She’s in the process of killing the Randyman,’ said Valesco. ‘Ridding
the world of a terrible supernatural threat. Something which neither you,
nor Dr Crisis, have been able to do, I might add.’
‘Is she?’ Roz countered. ‘I can’t help but recall you and her deliberately
intending to free the Randyman from Nick’s unconscious mind by leaving
that copy of Nick’s novel in the locker of Mike Crisis.’
‘There is that,’ said Valesco.
‘Because she wanted the Randyman to escape, didn’t she? That’s why
she enlisted me for the Phantascape project in the first place. It wasn’t to
block up a hole in Nick’s mind by negotiating with some damned labourers
he was refusing to pay. That was a blatant lie. No, she needed the
Randyman to follow someone from the world of dream back into reality.
Needed the dream-world of the Phantascape to bleed out into reality itself.
And Nullman knew all along that the best way to make that happen was by
putting me in there. Sending in Roz Bloom, the person who’d given Randy
Streak a sympathetic back story, and so the victim he’d be most likely to
follow back into the real world.
‘And it worked, dammit. Now the Randyman’s at loose in a waking
nightmare which Nullman’s now in full control of, owing to those darned
Lucidrix pills. And once she’s destroyed the Randyman, whom she no
longer has any need of, she’ll be in full charge of reality. She’ll be
unstoppable, Valesco. The worst dictator this world’s ever seen. Able to
bend reality itself to her will. And that’s bang out of order. Plus, if you’ll
permit me speaking out of turn here, borderline unethical.’
‘Since when has Nulltec cared about ethics?’ said Valesco, raising the
syringe gun toward Roz’s head.
Then he opened fire.
As the pink tube shot forth from the doctor’s barrel, the entire world
slowed in Roz’s mind.
Then she realised this wasn’t because she was so close to death, but
because everything was indeed now operating in slow motion. As she
waited anxiously for the harsh, penetrating jab of whatever lay inside that
deadly flying needle, something began to cross the gap between her and the
propelled syringe. Something large in shape, and bright white in hue.
A flapping lab coat.
Roz could hardly believe it, but Mike Crisis was propelling himself at a
snail’s pace between her and the approaching needle, moving at an
uncannily slow speed. She watched Mike’s jaws slowly parting, releasing as
they did so a spray of expelled saliva, while his front teeth clamped down
by degrees on slowly quivering lips as he screamed to her in long,
protracted syllables:
‘RRRUUUNNNN RRRROOOOZZZZ, RRRUUUUUNNNN!!!’
 Roz watched, helplessly, as the propelled needle embedded itself into
Mike’s arm instead, his body continuing to pass through the air at the speed
of a yawning sloth, before finally crashing, almost an hour later, into a
nearby desk crammed with steaming potion bottles.
These phials then exploded glacially in an arc of slowly shattering glass
as Mike’s body eventually slammed against the laboratory furniture and
rebounded by degrees off the wall, gliding back in the opposite direction,
toward Roz.
‘OOOOUUUCCCHHHH!’ Mike cried in a distorted, low-pitched howl
as he passed Roz again about three minutes later, spiralling between her and
the flabbergast-faced Valesco at the speed of a juddering mobility scooter,
arms flailing around him like someone’s hair in a shampoo advert.
Then, as suddenly as it had commenced, normal motion resumed. Roz
screamed as Mike hit the deck with a crumpling thud, grabbing immediately
at his injured arm, from which Valesco’s syringe was still protruding. The
whole of Mike’s arm was glowing a bright pink, Roz saw. Whatever he’d
absorbed in Roz’s stead had somehow caused his entire right half to shine
with a phosphorescent neon-pink glow.
‘You saved my life, Mike!’ Roz cried, trying to make him feel better
about his pink arm. ‘How did you do that?’
‘I just imagined myself flying forward in slow motion, Roz,’ yelled Mike
between gritted teeth. ‘I guess because when I first picked up those pills, I
thought they were sweets, and I must confess I licked the side of one of
them to test its flavour, although I then rejected it as it was largely aniseed,
which I hate. But that slight element of control I just had over the world of
the Phantascape is no doubt a result of that tiny lick. But I imagine I’ve now
used up almost all the control of the Phantascape I gained by licking the
pill, hence the abrupt end of that slow-motion sequence just now – meaning,
I presume, that there won’t be any more. If only I could have stomached the
taste of aniseed and swallowed the entire pill, I might even now be in
control of events like Nullman, and effecting a solution to this ongoing
crisis. But, in true Mike Crisis fashion, I’ve blown it again, somehow
managing to absorb whatever poisonous material Valesco was keeping
inside that syringe gun of his with no hope of controlling its effect. The
only light in this particular tunnel, Roz, is that for once I’m happy to endure
a spiralling personal crisis, if it means I’ve been able to reduce to some
degree your own particular ongoing crisis.’
 ‘Stop talking, Mike!’ yelled Roz. ‘Valesco’s already reloading his syringe
gun with that unspecified pink liquid, even as we speak!’
But she was too late. As Dr Valesco took aim at her again, Roz readied
herself to receive the imminent jab of a second propelled pink syringe. Then
Mike leapt suddenly from the floor, ignoring his pain, wielding his injured
arm like a wooden club.
Which it now resembled. For the limb had grown exponentially in the
last five seconds, swelling to gigantic proportions. As Mike’s swollen elbow
connected hard against Valesco’s face, the thing exploded like a propelled
water balloon, showering the front of Valesco’s head and body in a wide
burst of pink, glowing liquid. Rivulets of the scorching chemical smoked
and hissed as they ran across Valesco’s face, burning his cheeks like tossed
acid.
‘No!’ screamed Valesco, clawing at his smoking skin. ‘This stuff’s
absolutely lethal, you know!’
‘What is it?’ Mike yelled back, curiosity temporarily overcoming his
raging bloodlust.
‘It’s an explosive acid,’ cried Valesco, clutching at his disintegrating face.
‘At first it burns through layers of the skin. Then, when it’s penetrated down
far enough, it reacts with the calcium in your bone marrow and explodes
like a stick of dynamite.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Mike, throwing himself at Valesco again. They
grappled desperately with each other, Mike somehow blind to the burning
of the pink syringe fluid flowing through and from his own blasted stump.
Meanwhile, Roz hovered uselessly, unsure what to do.
‘Go and wake Nick, Roz!’ cried Mike Crisis, pointing uselessly with his
stump in the direction of the observation room opposite. ‘We need all the
help we can get if I’m to sort this particular crisis,’ he said. ‘In the
meantime, I’ll do my best to yank this bottle of pills from Dr Valesco’s lab
coat pocket before the pink exploding acid penetrates his bone matter and
blasts both him, me, and the pills it is essential we keep intact, into kingdom
come. Because without these pills, Roz, we have no hope of controlling the
Phantascape and getting reality back to normal again.’
Yes! thought Roz, snapping out of her glazed stupor. I must indeed wake
Nick! Nick Steen will know what to do. She ran through the laboratory
toward the observation room door and pushed it open.
 There he is, Roz thought, sighing deeply within. There he is, at long last.
The man who’d been incarcerated here for months against his will. The man
she could now hopefully free from his own living nightmare.
Nick Steen!
Then Roz glimpsed the other figure in repose directly beside him, and her
body shuddered with an instinctive revulsion. For here lay the woman
who’d consumed Steen’s own mind, unleashed and then destroyed the
dream-demon Randy Streak, all so that she alone could rule reality.
Dr Barbara Nullman.
Should Roz kill her first? It would be easy, after all. She could smother
her right here with a pillow, and all would be well again, without the need
for Mike to wrestle those Lucidrix pills back from the disintegrating Dr
Valesco. The unimaginable horror of Nullman’s plans for world domination,
assuming she’d succeeded in destroying the Randyman, would be over in an
instant.
But what guarantee did Roz have that Randy Streak had been defeated
yet? The last she’d seen of her pursuing dream-demon, it had been involved
in a titanic death struggle with the monstrous demonic form of a dream-
altered Nullman. If Roz killed the real-life version of Nullman sleeping
before her, and Randy Streak was still haunting reality, then Roz might be
back to square one, with the Randyman once again in full control of the
bleeding Phantascape and fully intent on taking Roz back with it into Hell.
No, it made sense to be cautious, she decided, as much as she’d like to rid
the world straight away of this malicious medical missy. She should wake
Nick first, and then together, they might have enough collective strength of
will left to combat whatever beast won that ongoing battle of the dream-
demons.
Yes, she decided. I must wake Nick first.
Roz reached inside her coat for the letter which contained the message
from Nick’s daughter, knowing full well that the words from his darling
Georgina would immediately shake him from his near-permanent coma, and
proceeded to withdraw it from her pocket.
But the letter never emerged.
‘Hi, Roz,’ snarled Nick, his eyes darting open.
Except those weren’t Nick’s eyes, Roz realised. Nick’s eyes were cobalt
blue. These were amber in hue.
The eyes of Dr Nullman!
 ‘That’s right, my pretty!’ the doctor screamed as her head burst suddenly
through Nick’s own, squeezing itself through the author’s torn and parted
skin. Roz watched as razor-like teeth chomped down on shards of Nick’s
collapsing skull and the monster hiding within her favourite author slowly
climbed out.
Gasping with revulsion, Roz laid eyes on the other sleeping form – the
figure she’d previously assumed to be Nullman. It, too, had changed form.
Now she saw that this was Nick. She realised in horror that if she’d gone
along with her initial instinct to destroy what she’d believed to be
Nullman’s sleeping form, she’d have ended up smothering Nick himself,
believing him to be the malicious Chief Head of the Nulltec Corporation!
‘Exactly, baby doll!’ cried the thing that was Nullman, now almost fully
emerged from the carcass that had previously resembled Nick. The demon
was fat and oily, consisting of a bloated, amorphous mound of boneless
flesh vaguely human in shape, yet flecked with random clumps of toilet
piping that seemed to emerge, boil-like, from the surface of its flesh, along
with irregular clusters of puffing cigarettes protruding from various
unspecified orifices. They looked like miniature pipe organs. Much of the
Nullman Demon’s body was yellowed with nicotine, while other areas
looked like they’d been formed from a cluster of superglued fingernails, all
daubed in Nullman’s signature shade of burgundy red.
But they no longer looked alluring.
They were just rank.
‘You puffed up, toilet-piped bitch!’FN57 yelled Roz. ‘I could have killed
Nick straight away and been none the wiser!’
‘Too bad, my pretty,’ hissed the Nullman Demon, spitting out a thick
globule of dampened ash. ‘But if I can change the subject just for a
moment,’ it added, ‘there’s a problem with absorbing a dream-demon
consisting largely of sewage waste.’ It paused, examining the globule it had
just expelled. ‘When mixed with cigarette ash, everything just goes clumpy.
Please inform Dr Valesco as I can’t get him on the walkie-talkie.’
Valesco! Roz suddenly remembered. What the hell was happening in his
office? How the hell was Mike Crisis getting on trying to wrestle those
Lucidrix pills from the doctor’s melting chest? Before she could shout
through for a progress update, the Nullman Demon spat again, hawking a
great wad of wet ash in Roz’s direction.
 Roz ducked just in time, the globule slamming against the observation
room window, cracking it in two.
‘So you’ve defeated the Randyman, have you?’ Roz asked, stalling for
time. She realised that she didn’t really have a plan of action, now that she
was wholly unable to read Nick the letter from his daughter undisturbed.
And from the sound of the crazed thrashing in Valesco’s second office next
door, Mike Crisis had his own problems to contend with.
‘Yeah, I ate him up,’ roared the Nullman Demon. ‘Swallowed him whole.
Wanna see?’
The demon whipped its vast salamander-like tail around and pointed to a
particularly large yellow blister on its behind. From within the pale oval
boil screamed what looked like a small head, which, Roz saw, amid the grue
within, wore a distinctive brown trilby.
‘Randy . . .’ Roz whispered, clamping one hand over her mouth for fear
of puking. ‘What have you done to him?’
‘Help me!’ squealed the absorbed Randy Streak, appealing directly to
Roz. ‘Help me!’
‘I can’t, Randy!’ Roz felt horrified, yet strangely moved by the pathetic
sight. For though she loathed the Randyman, knew that the terrifying
dream-demon was the cause of this entire catastrophe, she still felt a pang of
sympathy for the toilet attendant it had once been. After all, Randy Streak
had never hurt anyone, had he? That poor, lonely clog-shifter had never
asked to end up as a particularly noxious pustule on the arse of a usurping
female dream-demon, had he?
‘I’m in control now,’ snarled the Nullman Demon. ‘I control reality!’
Roz shuddered. Presumably that also meant Nullman now controlled the
enforcement regulations for Nulltec’s much-feted conference parking
facilities. She recalled that her own car was still parked in Nulltec’s
appointed visitors’ section, and she had so far successfully challenged an
ongoing fine as she was technically Nulltec’s ‘patient’. Yet that could all
change if Nullman finally gained access to her own clamps and could
legally designate the area as ‘private land’. In that case, Roz would not only
be facing a reality warped by the terrifying Nullman Demon, but also fresh
negotiations with court-appointed bailiffs, from which resultant legal fees
might rapidly escalate.
‘You monster!’ screamed Roz.
 ‘Die!’ screamed the Nullman Demon back at her, lunging itself toward
Roz for the final kill.
Then Valesco exploded.
 CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Hell on Earth’

The floor gave way beneath her and Roz found herself plunging downward
yet again. With her fell the sleeping Nick – still in his bed and fully erect –
along with the surrounding laboratory equipment and all that remained of
the sleeping chamber itself. Behind her dropped the exploded remains of
Valesco’s blasted second office, the remains of the evil doctor himself, and
presumably Mike Crisis, too, who’d been in the process of grappling with
him when he’d erupted.
A series of weakened floors gave way beneath the falling detritus of
Ward Nine, slowing Roz’s descent. Jeez, she thought as she continued to
plummet through them. Just how far down below the earth’s crust does
Nulltec go exactly? But before she could even begin to hazard a guess, Roz
felt herself slam into a patch of soft, damp ground.
When the dust eventually settled, Roz saw she was lying inside a vast,
cavernous factory. Jets of steam hissed around her from all directions,
emitting themselves from numerous pipe outlets running along every visible
surface. Innumerable metallic gantries created a grill-like mesh everywhere
she looked. No doubt this subterranean industrial plant was where Nulltec
powered the near-limitless technical demands required for their facility
above.
Amid the mounds of rubble created by the destroyed floors, Roz could
see what looked like a gigantic boiler ahead of her, hundreds of feet high,
its metallic surface miraculously untouched by the collapsing floors.
Brightly coloured lights flashed from various consoles attached to the vast
structure, which Roz assumed to be a big battery of some kind. Between her
and it lay Nick, still sleeping away in his largely intact hospital bed.
Though the size of the underground cavern was vast, Roz felt more
trapped here than anywhere else she’d been, so claustrophobic was the
effect of knowing how far below the earth’s surface she now lay.
 And then she heard the rumbling.
It was coming from in front of her, she thought. But before she had a
chance to crawl forward to Nick’s sleeping frame and read him the letter
from his daughter in order to engage his help in getting out of here, a
mound of refuse in front of her rose with a violent burst and the Nullman
Demon emerged from within.
‘Now where were we, my pretty?’ the thing snarled, resting its gaze upon
Roz.
Oh, God, its hopeless, thought Roz. She couldn’t wake Nick, and there
was no chance at all of Mike helping her out, the feckless doctor having
been in the immediate vicinity of Dr Valesco when he’d exploded in a burst
of pink flame. All was lost.
Then she heard it. A vague slapping sound coming from somewhere
behind. With the only light coming from those flaming gas jets high up on
the distant gantries, Roz couldn’t yet see what she was hearing.
Trapped as she was inside this underground no-man’s land, Roz forced
her body backwards into a small crater of refuse in order to avoid the
slithering Nullman Demon’s advancing form. Then, poking her head
upward above the rear-side rim of the crater, she saw, just a few yards away,
a miraculous sight.
It was Mike, still clutching the exploded Valesco, who was now
essentially little but a spine with half a head on top. Both men lay sprawled
on the ground, still wrestling with each other by instinct in a pool of blood,
bone and steaming pink chemical. Both doctors were largely obliterated,
though what remained of Mike was doing his very best to pound Valesco’s
exposed skull into the ground with his phosphorescent arm-stump. As Roz
watched in horror, she saw Mike’s other arm was horribly withered, then
realised it was turned inward, clutching something close to his chest, as if to
protect whatever was concealed there from the violent forces it, and he, had
recently been subjected to.
‘Mike!’ Roz yelled.
He turned to face her with his glowing pink head. Then pushed himself
up from the floor he was partly sticking to and held up the intact bottle of
Lucidrix pills.
‘I got them!’ he cried.
‘You genius!’ Roz yelled back at him. ‘You did it!’
‘I did it!’ Mike cried, coughing up half a lung.
 ‘Now swallow one!’ Roz said, aware that the Nullman Demon was still
advancing upon her from behind. She could hear – and, more importantly,
smell – the damned thing getting closer all the time.
‘I can’t, Roz,’ Mike replied.
‘You must, Mike!’ Roz sensed the desperation in her own voice. ‘That
way you can be in control of the Phantascape, too. You’ll be able to dream
yourself well again and be strong enough to rescue us all!’
‘No, Roz,’ gasped Mike, shaking his head. ‘I can’t risk that. Sure, I’m
doing okay at the moment. Whatever small amount of Lucidrix I managed
to lick off the side of that tablet has stood me in good stead, but my luck
can’t last. If I try and open this bottle now and neck its contents, it’ll no
doubt slip straight from my fingers and roll off into some distant corner. Or
the sheer nervous tension will cause me to suffer a catastrophic cardiac
arrest at this most crucial of moments. I can’t risk causing that kind of
crisis, Roz. Here. You take them.’
He flung back his arm suddenly and threw the bottle of pills toward Roz.
They sailed right over her head.
‘No!’ Roz cried, the desperation she’d heard in her voice now sounding
like outright devastation. This had been their only hope of defeating the
Nullman Demon, she knew. If, as Mike had no doubt intended, Roz had
been able to catch the bottle in her hand and neck those pills herself, then
she’d have been able to control the Phantascape, too. She, like Nullman,
would have been a ruler of dreams. But Mike had blown it big time again,
fumbling the most important throw of his entire life by pitching their final
hope straight over the head of the intended recipient, directly into the path
of the enemy.
‘You fool, Mike!’ screamed Roz, no longer able to contain her
frustration. ‘That was our only hope, dammit! Our only chance to beat
Nullman! Our only chance of regaining control of the Phantascape, and by
extension reality, and you’ve sent it spiralling way over my head and into
Nullman’s grasp!’
Roz watched the arcing bottle of Lucidrix pass over her, landing directly
in front of the slithering Nullman Demon.
The monster smiled, licking its lips, then scooped up the bottle of pills in
its tongue, preparing to swallow it whole.
It’s the end, Roz thought. The end of the world.
 Or is it? she wondered, suddenly. What about the Randyman? What
about that vanquished spirit of Randy Streak, trapped inside the spot on
Nullman’s behind? Surely he hadn’t been completely destroyed if he was
still able to see out from the back of her arse. He was only trapped in there,
wasn’t he? A prisoner, like Roz had been, and Nick too. Randy Streak was
just as much Nullman’s victim as they were. So why wouldn’t it leap at any
chance it might have to escape?
Roz shuddered inside. I am that chance, she realised. If anything was
going to give the Randyman strength enough to fight its way out of the
Nullman Demon’s arse, it was Roz Bloom. She’d have to offer herself.
She’d have to join it.
For it was the only way. If she finally did as the Randyman asked – if she
agreed at long last to be its wife and live with it for all eternity in that public
toilet it had decorated so lovingly with those leftover condom balloons, then
maybe, just maybe, the Randyman would be able to escape and prevent the
Nullman Demon from swallowing all the remaining Lucidrix pills and
ruling the Phantascape until the end of time.
Sure, she’d lose her soul, Roz realised, but Nick, and Mike, and
Stalkford, and Clackett Publishing, would still live.
And the Randyman had gifted her those trainers, hadn’t it? And that
convenient door.
She had to do it.
‘Randyman, Randyman, Randyman, Randyman, Randyman . . .’ she
began to intone. Nullman’s tongue ceased rolling upward in the direction of
its mouth, not quite cognisant of Roz’s plan.
‘Randyman, Randyman, Randyman, Randyman, Randyman,’ Roz
continued, and then the Nullman Demon realised precisely what Roz was
up to. Panicked, the monster slurped its tongue upward at full speed in an
attempt to swallow the bottle of Lucidrix pills whole.
Roz tried to ignore the slimy folds of the thing’s lolling mouth organ as
she continued her incantation.
‘Randyman, Randyman, Randyman, Randyman, Randyman . . .’ Roz tried
to speed up the words. Why had Nick insisted on people muttering the
dream-demon’s name seventeen times? She’d told him that five was
sufficient, hadn’t she? But alas, Nick had insisted on seventeen, one for
every book he had planned, and now that number, like the series itself, was
proving far too many. The Nullman Demon had the bottle in its mouth and
was starting to swallow it. Roz, once again, was out of time.
Then the Nullman Demon’s eyes widened abruptly as the contractions in
its throat suddenly ceased. There was a loud release of air from somewhere
behind and the motions in the monster’s neck resumed, only in the opposite
direction now, with the pills it had been in the process of swallowing sliding
back upward, into its mouth.
There was a violent tremor from the Nullman Demon’s rear end as the
creature’s body went into spasm. It began whirling around in circles,
attempting in vain to ascertain what was currently happening to its arse like
a dog chasing its own tail. Then Roz caught sight of the swelling yellow
pustule on the demon’s rear. It was pulsing outward, as if about to burst.
Roz caught sight of an old trilby pressing upward against the taut, milky
skin.
‘Randyman, Randyman!’ Roz yelled, completing her supernatural
intonation. All at once, the head of Randy Streak burst through the Nullman
Demon’s salamander arse and bit it on the opposite cheek.
The Nullman Demon roared in agony, the force of the Randyman’s
clamped teeth forcing its throat muscles into spasm as the jar of Lucidrix
shot out of its mouth and into the air again, loop-de-looping in giddy circles
above them, before finally falling downward, toward the ground . . .
. . . straight into Roz’s hands!
She could hardly believe her eyes, then, as the Randyman proceeded to
consume the Nullman Demon’s body from the arse-cheeks up. Roz saw
there was nothing the Chief Head of the Nulltec Corporation could do about
it, as while scratching one’s behind was a relatively easy task to achieve for
the layperson, anyone with severe weight difficulties, which the Nullman
Demon suffered from in abundance, had the devil’s own job of wiping, let
alone scratching, their behind without professional assistance and/or a
dishwasher-friendly medical scoop.
The Nullman Demon had neither, and there was nothing it could do to
prevent the Randyman’s assault. Once it had swallowed the Nullman
Demon right up to the neck, the Randyman paused momentarily, as though
to savour a final dish, then yanked out the plunger from inside its grubby
mackintosh.
‘Plunge this!’ the Randyman shrieked, ramming the device against the
Nullman Demon’s head before sucking it inside out and expelling it
violently through a hole that had just appeared in the ground, all the way
down to Hell.
Roz applauded. ‘Well done, Randy,’ she said. ‘You did it!’
Then, yanking the top off the pill bottle as quickly as she could, Roz
prepared to neck the remaining Lucidrix. With the pills finally inside her,
she could easily send the Randyman on its way without having to marry it
after all.
The pills never got there. With a swift swipe of its deadly plunger, the
Randyman smashed the bottle from Roz’s hands. She watched it fly away,
off into the distance behind her.
‘Not so fast, Roz,’ hissed the Randyman. ‘You made a promise,
remember?’
‘Did I?’ she replied, feigning innocence. Then the wall on one side of the
room suddenly parted and Roz saw, in the dream-world appearing beyond,
the grim, grey tower blocks of Dankton Park.
‘You sure did, doll. You and me are getting hitched. We’re going to live
in a toilet till the end of time, Roz. We’re gonna paint the town green!’
Then the dream-demon lunged toward her, cackling insanely like Sid
James, Wilfrid Brambell and Stacey Solomon again. As it spread wide the
folds of its grubby mackintosh, like a giant bat, the thing pounced at Roz
with its demon plunger.
‘Here comes my bride!’ it screamed.
And finally, it was all over.
 CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Apocalypticum’

For at that very moment, Mike Crisis flew through the air between them and
landed a powerful kick in the Randyman’s plunger.
The dream-demon howled, scrabbling frantically at its rubberised rod.
‘Kick ’em where they hurt, Roz,’ Mike said, munching on a Lucidrix pill.
‘By the way, those Lucidrix pills are all over the ground back there. The
bottle Randy Streak knocked from your hands landed right in front of me.’
Mike adopted a karate stance, then flew at the Randyman with a mixture
of exploding fists and roundhouse kicks.
He was almost completely healed now, Roz noticed. Those pills, in this
half-dream, half-reality environment, were nothing short of a miracle!
‘Where did you learn to fight like that?’ said Roz, shocked at the sheer
severity of Mike’s assault.
‘I dreamed it,’ he said. ‘After all, I’m in control of the Phantascape now.
With Nullman out of the way, I’m the most powerful person present. Not
even the damned Randyman can stop me!’
He sucker-punched Randy Streak, sending the dream-demon flying
backward over the ground in the direction of the massive boiler-like
structure Roz had noticed earlier.
‘I’m not sure that’s wise, Mike,’ said Roz. Even though she was pleased
to have escaped the clutches of Randy Streak, something told her that a
world ruled by Mike Crisis was potentially a world more dangerous than
one ruled by a dream-demon.
Mike grabbed the Randyman’s head in his hands and slammed it against
the ground.
‘Take that, you grimy little pervert!’ he yelled. ‘You miserable toilet-
trader! How would you like to be kicked inside a septic tank for a few
hours? Or days? Or weeks? Or months?’
 Mike punctuated each of these time-related words with a separate
roundhouse kick, propelling the Randyman backward with each successive
blow.
‘Or maybe years?’
Mike picked up Randy Streak in his arms and hurled the dream-demon
across the ground, propelling it closer to the vast metallic structure ahead of
them.
Was that what the thing was, Roz wondered? A giant septic tank? Surely
not? Surely Nulltec was connected to Stalkford’s main sewage network?
Even though the facility was located between two vast areas of natural
woodland in the middle of nowhere, surely Stalkford Council had plumbed
Nulltec into a central drainage system? But maybe not. Maybe the technical
facility was situated so far away from the rest of society that they needed
their own internal tank through which they could process all manner of
human and industrial waste. They were a secret facility, after all, Roz
recalled. If anyone was in need of a private industrial-sized septic tank, it
was Nulltec. And yet this gleaming metallic structure looked little like a
conventional septic tank. And surely if it was, she’d be able to smell it from
this distance?
‘You’re gonna drown in your own filth, Randy Streak,’ yelled Mike at
the flailing, wailing dream-demon. ‘You’re going to choke on your own
mess. And there’s nothing you can do about it! Because I’m Mike Crisis,
damn it! Mike “he’s damned good in a crisis” Crisis! And for once in my
life I’m gonna make damn sure I do the right thing. And that means
throwing your streaking, toilet-lurking ass into a mound of raw, toxic
sewage. You’re going back to Hell, Randy Streak!’
‘No, Mike!’ Roz had to stop him. This wasn’t right. Randy Streak was
innocent. Surely Mike knew that from reading the damned book? But then
he’d admitted he’d skipped bits, and fallen asleep while reading it, she
recalled.
In any case, Mike’s judgement was impaired because he was in the
middle of his own foolhardy rescue attempt, too bound up in his own
mission to think about what the hell he was actually doing. All he wanted
now was to impress Roz by showing her he could defeat the Randyman and
bring her back from the jaws of Hell. He probably thought that by doing
that, she’d once again be interested in copping a feel of his scrawny arse.
But Roz was so over that.
 Fair enough, he was getting results, and had saved her life, admittedly,
but he’d overshot his load by a country mile. Now he was beating the poor
Randyman to a pulp and threatening to murder it, just like those nasty
youths in Nick’s book. That was bound to end in disaster, Roz knew. Either
the dream-demon would develop some new-found strength of will and fight
back even harder against his oppressor, or Mike was going to live up to his
name and do something so stupid he’d turn a devastating crisis into an
apocalyptic crisis.
Roz froze. That word. That word told her everything she needed to know.
That was no septic tank Mike was currently kicking the Randyman’s
flailing body toward. If only! No, that vast metallic structure before them
was nothing less than the nuclear-powered reactor Nulltec had installed
deep under the facility grounds. The nuclear reactor Nullman had casually
tossed into conversation in that first meeting, and which both Roz and Mike
had chosen to ignore.
Now those pre-nuclear chickens would be coming home to roost in a
post-apocalyptic pecking shed if Roz didn’t do something about it – and
swiftly.
But what could she do?
The pills, of course! Whipping herself round, Roz crawled from the
crater she’d fallen into and scrambled back in the direction of the exploded
Valesco. There she saw them, scattered all across the ground. Small caplets
of black and yellow, like segments of wasp. Carefully, and with a sense of
awe, she picked one up in her hands.
Should she swallow it? Should Roz swallow a Lucidrix pill and assume
control of reality? Look at how the experience was affecting Mike,
massaging his bruised ego into an all-powerful force of primal destruction?
What if she, too, ended up losing control, instead of gaining it? Becoming
as manipulative and power-crazed as Nullman? Could Roz maintain control
of her own moral compass were she to suddenly find herself so powerful
that she was able to beat the Randyman single-handed, like Mike was doing
right now? Wouldn’t she potentially become an all-powerful dream-demon
herself?
Then, through the hazy chaos of her thoughts, Roz remembered Nick,
and knew she had to do it. She had to swallow this pill for Nick and his
daughter, if nothing else. And as long as she held on to that thought alone,
she knew she’d be okay.
 For she could never destroy if she kept a goal like that in mind. Could
never harm or maim. Why, she hadn’t even been able to hate Randy Streak,
had she? Instead, she’d been the one who’d urged Nick to give the villain a
sympathetic back story. Had seen the good in him. And she couldn’t destroy
Mike Crisis now, either. No matter what sick journey of violent revenge he
was currently wrongfully engaged in. Why, deep down, Roz loved men,
however challenging, difficult and potentially dodgy they invariably came
across as. For, deep down, men were what made the world go round,
especially, say, those who were ground-breaking, innovative and influential
story-makers specialising in the horror genre. And all at once, Roz knew
she could enter the Phantascape with Nick and Mike, and control it after all.
She could go in there herself and defeat Randy Streak in a humane way.
Then rescue Nick, locate his daughter with him and all go home for a take-
away curry.
With a smile, Roz swallowed the pill in her hand, mouthed ‘I love you’ to
the world, and turned back toward Mike.
The pill took effect immediately. She didn’t feel remotely drowsy, but she
sensed her power instantly. It surged within her. She was no longer scared,
she realised. No longer frightened of anything that the Randyman might do
to her.
She was in control.
Roz only had to think and she was already there, beside Mike, as he
prepared to launch yet another frenzied assault on Randy Streak’s personal
plumbing area.
‘No, Mike,’ she whispered softly. ‘Release him.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Roz,’ said Mike, landing a giant boot in the area of the
Randyman’s groinal closet flange.
‘Help me, Roz!’ squealed the dying Randyman. ‘Tell him to leave me
alone!’
‘I mean it, Mike!’ Roz yelled. ‘Leave Randy alone!’
‘You’re acting like a silly female, Roz,’ Mike snarled at her. ‘You stay
out of this, okay? Leave this crisis to me, Mike “he roundhouse-kicks a
crisis” Crisis.’
Mike grabbed the Randyman in his hands and hurled him forward again.
The dream-demon’s body slammed hard into the metallic wall of the
nuclear reactor.
 A devastating tremor reverberated from deep within the structure itself.
The lights up on the distant gantries overhead began to flicker and fade as
the power source fuelling them temporarily went offline.
‘Mike, you fool!’ Roz said. ‘That’s not a septic tank!’
‘Of course it is! And it’s where this slimy little Flash Harry’s headed.’
She had no other option. Roz had to intervene. Concentrating her mind,
she willed Mike away from the injured body of Randy Streak.
And as soon as she’d thought it, Mike was gone.
‘Thank you, Roz,’ croaked the Randyman, staring up at her with sad,
wounded eyes. Then he vanished too.
And appeared several feet away, in exactly the spot to which she’d just
transported Mike Crisis.
‘I said leave it to me, Roz,’ said the doctor, and recommenced
pummelling his prey.
This was useless, Roz realised. They’d both swallowed Lucidrix pills so
technically were now evenly matched. She was caught in a tit-for-tat battle
with a rival dream-master. She needed extra help. Needed another person to
back her up and weight the odds in her favour.
She needed Nick.
Roz only had to wish it and there she was, standing beside his gurney,
leaning tenderly over his slumbering, balded frame.
She drew the letter from her pocket and began to read.
‘Daddy,’ she said. ‘My dearest, darling, Daddy . . . It’s Georgina . . .’
She witnessed a mild tremor in Nick’s body. A small shimmering of
muscular movement. Something in those words Roz had just spoken were
already rousing him, stirring an emotional reaction deep inside.
Instinctively, responding to what was evidently a huge swelling of pent-up
feelings, Nick’s eyes blinked open.
‘Roz?’ he said, his voice croaking. ‘You found me. You brought me back
from Hell . . .’
‘Shh,’ whispered Roz. ‘There’s no time to explain. Swallow this.’
She slipped one of the Lucidrix pills between Nick’s parted lips, and
immediately he was wide awake.
‘What the hell’s happening?’
‘No time to explain, Nick. We have to stop Mike Crisis from pounding
the Randyman against the wall of that nuclear reactor.’
‘What nuclear reactor?’ said Nick, looking round.
 ‘That nuclear reactor!’ yelled Roz, pointing at the huge nuclear reactor
standing behind them.
‘That’s a giant septic tank, surely?’
‘God, Nick, will you just help me!’
‘In a moment, Roz. Right now, I really need to go and . . . er . . . relieve
myself.’
‘Forget relieving yourself!’ Roz yelled, running back in the direction of
Mike. What was happening to her? She was losing control of the
Phantascape! All because of bloody, pig-headed men!
‘Stop it, Mike,’ she yelled. ‘Put the Randyman down! That’s not a giant
septic tank, it’s a nuclear reactor!’
But it was too late. Mike lifted the dream-demon in his arms, preparing to
hurl the Randyman into the metal wall for a final time.
Then he stopped.
‘You,’ he muttered, confused, as the figure of Nick stepped out directly in
front of him, wielding a Magnum .44 revolver.
‘You did it, Nick,’ squealed Roz. ‘You willed yourself between Mike
Crisis, the ailing Randyman and that wall of the nuclear reactor.’
‘Of course I did, Roz. I could see that you and the entire world was in
imminent jeopardy due to this punk’s lethally self-massaged ego. Drop the
Streak, buddy.’
Mike did as Nick commanded, dropping the Randyman to the ground,
where he immediately curled into a foetal ball and started whimpering. Roz
yearned to reach out and comfort the ailing dream-demon, but realised Nick
wasn’t yet finished with Mike.
‘So you’re a tough guy, huh? Well listen up, buddy. Sure, we all wanna
be heroes. But we have to earn that right. And it takes a lifetime of small-
scale heroics before you even get close to the medal-earning feats of
bravery I’m able to provide. You very nearly escalated a devastating crisis
into what I’d term an apocalyptic crisis.’
‘Hey Nick, that’s my phrase . . .’ said Roz.
‘Quiet, Roz.’ Nick turned back to Mike Crisis. ‘Thank God I was here to
prevent that happening. At the precise moment I needed to relieve myself as
well. That’s true heroism, pal. You watch and learn. Because you’ve got a
long way to go yet, sugar balls.’
‘I’m sorry, Nick,’ gasped Mike, his head dropping downward in shame.
‘Now clean up this mess,’ said Nick.
 As he passed Roz, she dared herself to speak. ‘Nick, I just want to say
thanks. For everything. I couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘No need to thank me, Roz,’ said Nick. ‘Just live a good life. That’s all I
ask.’
‘I will.’
‘Now let’s get out of here.’
He stepped past her. Roz watched him go, awestruck by Nick’s selfless
act of self-sacrifice, which had brought things to a happy conclusion in the
nick of time. Tenderly, she reached down and helped the beaten Randyman
to his feet. She’d get the dream-demon cleaned up and housed somewhere,
and then, if he still insisted on marrying her, phone the authorities and get
him taken away. Leading the beleaguered toilet attendant by the hand, Roz
followed Nick, who was busy behind a distant boulder, no doubt relieving
himself in one way or another, having bravely held things off when the
moment called.
As Roz disappeared from sight, Mike gazed after her, tears of bitterness
welling in his eyes.
Then, as those heavy, hopeless tears began to fall, he placed both hands
on the wall in front of him, and, with a howl of futility and sadness, butted
his stupid head against the dented metal lining.
And exploded the entire world.

Roz survived because she was still on the Lucidrix. Nick, too. Their dreams
had saved them, thereby ensuring their ultimate survival in a post-
apocalyptic world. But the Phantascape was gone now, blown up in a
devastating nuclear explosion that had destroyed most of Stalkford. Mike
Crisis and Randy Streak, too (the pill’s effect on Mike had prematurely
worn off). And everyone else who’d once walked and stalked the corridors
of Nulltec.
‘I should have listened to you, Roz,’ Nick said, as they stared up at the
fuzzy television screen above them in the relative safety of their private
nuclear bunker some months later. ‘I should have listened when you told me
to stop flying those damned planes. Now look what’s happened. Stalkford’s
been completely destroyed. Nothing but a dead wasteland above us.
Everything completely gone.’ He looked across at her. ‘Mind if I have the
last Blue Riband?’
‘Help yourself, Nick. You’ve had all the rest. But remember, Nick. That’s
the last Blue Riband. The last Blue Riband in the whole of what’s left of
Stalkfordshire. Savour it.’
‘Not quite true, Roz. There’s a shop in the Spinal Mountains that sells
Blue Ribands, unless I’m very much mistaken. And that, as you know, is
where I’m headed.’
They looked up at the screen again as an image flashed across it. A
grainy photograph of a distant town in the mountains, rumoured to house a
small pocket of survivors.
‘Must you, Nick?’ Roz asked, already knowing what his answer would
be. ‘Must you go?’
‘Yes, Roz. As I’ve told you a thousand times, I must. I must go.’
‘Do you think you’ll find her?’ Roz asked, after a few moments of
lingering silence. She handed Nick his backpack and a full Thermos of Irish
coffee.
‘I have to, Roz. Her letter said so. I have to believe she’s still up there in
the Spinal Mountains, just lazing about. I have to believe she survived.’
‘And if you find her, Nick? If you manage to cross that post-apocalyptic
hell zone above us. Will you do what she asked? Will you lend her that fifty
pounds?’
‘Maybe,’ Nick said. ‘But probably not. After all,’ he asked her, deeply
and profoundly, ‘what use is money now, in a nuclear wasteland?’
‘True,’ said Roz. ‘So, so true. By the way, I’ll stay here, if that’s okay? I
hear there are mutants and things like that above us.’
‘There are now,’ said Nick, sighing. ‘Turns out Nulltec failed to close
that hole in my mind, after all. Meaning all the post-apocalyptic horrors I’ve
imagined in my novels over the years are out there for real now. Waiting for
me alone.’
‘Then good luck, Nick. Sounds like you’ll need it!’ Roz laughed.
‘Thanks, Roz. I’ll bring you back that Blue Riband.’
‘Thanks, Nick.’ She was crying now.
Nick stepped into the lift that would take him up into the Deadish Zone,
and a world enclosed by the all-powerful Bowl.
‘One final thing, Nick,’ Roz said, her voice wavering as the doors of the
transmat-lift began to close.
 ‘Yes, Roz?’ Nick said, refusing to smile for fear it might give his former
editor a glimmer of hope. And there was little of that left now.
‘Not dark orange-flavoured, okay?’
‘Not dark orange-flavoured,’ he replied softly, as the metal doors closed
over his face, and Nick Steen finally went in search of his missing daughter.
While Roz cleaned up.

The End
 GARTH MARENGHI’S
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Carl Sagan for his R-Complex, but nothing else. Myself, yet again, for all
that I do and am yet to do. My wife Pam for restraining me when necessary
(and oft when unnecessary), and my daughters, I guess, though none of
them did a thing to help me.
 MATTHEW HOLNESS’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to thank my partner Sarah Dempster, who as always read Garth’s
initial outpourings and bravely challenged all that might (i.e. would) offend.
Likewise my mum and dad for their faith in both Garth and myself, two
equally irascible horror hacks. Perennial thanks to Clara, who named and
drew Throttle and Bribes in Garth’s ‘other’ book once her substantial fee
had been secured (twice). I love you all.
My literary agent Matthew Turner for handling Garth’s output throughout
(no easy task when you’re a decent human being) and for much-valued
advice and support. Sophie Chapman, Rhonda and Kim too, for managing
my live shows, and Joshua Boland-Burrell and all at Live Nation for their
persistent hard work on the same.
My editor Harriet Poland for providing sage guidance and eternal
patience as the latest deadline loomed. Likewise Tom, Dominic, Kate,
Alice, Liam, Lewis and all the team at Hodder for seeing me through that
difficult second trilogy of self-contained yet thematically integrated horror-
based mini-tomes.
As ever, Joe Avery for balding Garth so beautifully on another glorious
front cover, and Alisdair Wood for three sublime glimpses of Garth’s
fictional homes.

Thank you, everyone.

 Footnotes

FN1 Incidentally, I can now reveal publicly for the first time that the previous year’s Spillenium ’98
was called off abruptly not as a result of government surveillance, as was widely reported, but
because of a devastating outbreak of winter-vomiting disease which spread like wildfire through our
assembled guests and part-drowned David Icke. GM

FN2 Hacked later that year. GM

FN3 Whose name, on her bloody insistence, has been removed. GM

FN4 If you don’t know who he is, I would have suggested looking him up, but, believe me, it isn’t
worth it. GM

FN5 Unknown Pieces of Outer Space. GM

FN6 Technically unreality. See the rest of this book. GM

FN7 No, I did not, and to be honest, Carl Sagan has hardly anything to do with the concept of this
book at all. I’ve just used him as a convenient means to hammer out a thousand-plus words of
required author intro. You’d actually do best to ignore him entirely and just enjoy the tales within.
Because if there’s a profound point to any of this, then it’s my point. Not his. GM

FN8 Wrong – it was simply a neck brace. GM

FN9 Which is possibly, nay probably, but not positively, an alternate Latin phrase for ‘prisoner’, the
official word being captivus. GM

FN10 Specifically, why was he now imprisoned in Nulltec by that damned sanctimonious cow Dr
Barbara Nullman? GM

FN11 I presume you get the picture by now that these are a succession of eerie, endless corridors. If
not, may I suggest you re-read. GM

FN12 Blame the copy-editor and/or changing times. GM

FN13 Our deep-rooted reptilian instinct, also known as the basal ganglia or basal nuclei, containing
the brain stem, limbic region and the amygdala. The main reason that human beings murder, maim,
draw penises inside books and hog the middle lane. GM

FN14 He hadn’t. It was simply a deep-rooted fetishistic urge deep within Nick’s brain. We all have
them. Mine revolve around ant-mounds. GM
FN15 And yes, he also had upper ones. GM

FN16 Although not quite a miracle, obviously. It was largely down to the Taffer’s actions. I dare say
an editor, had I allowed one, would have pointed this out. But they wouldn’t have stopped at this note
alone. Hence a footnote by yours truly. GM

FN17 Again, technically with the Taffer’s help, but Nick is the hero here, hence me retaining my
version of the preceding paragraph. GM

FN18 See above notes.

FN19 Not strictly Grecian canon, but the alternative legend is, in many ways, superior. See my
novel The Man-Gorgon and its sequels Guygon, Galgon, Bride of Guygon, Guygon vs Galgon,
Galgon Rising and Guygon 2012 (Stone Free). GM

FN20 With the emphasis very much on ‘time being’. GM

FN21 Heh heh. GM

FN22 This detail will assume greater importance in Tomes 2 and 3, so do clock it now. While
technically not an example of literary foreshadowing, it is a case of intricate, masterful plotting. GM

FN23 Verb. To establish (something) for certain; make sure of. A superior word (i.e., much better)
than ‘find out’ which is two words and what a lesser writer would have used in this instance. GM

FN24 Again, another example of intricate, masterful plotting. As before, clock this detail now, in
order to be richly rewarded later. In Tomes 2 and 3, to be specific. GM

FN25 Feel free to add some of your own terms to this list. GM

FN26 The guy she extracted the R-Complex from. I have said this already. GM

FN27 Which also means I don’t have to write said passage out a third time, wasting my time, like
this footnote is currently doing. GM

FN28 I.e., blood. GM

FN29 He wasn’t. GM

FN30 Again, essential foreshadowing. GM.

FN31 A safe act for Nick to engage upon here, as all tears will be disguised from view by the
surrounding water. GM

FN32 Yet. GM

FN33 And there was. Keep reading. GM

FN34 An alternative, yet equally effective line here would be ‘But for how long?’. Feel free to
choose your preferred version, although I will say here and now that I am not doing two different
prints. I repeat. I am not doing two different prints. GM

FN35 Those words being the ones used in the previous sentence. GM

FN36 Which, considering the boiling point for water-soluble ink is 212°F is no mean feat here.
Technically, however, the ink in question is Victorian iron gall ink, which will have a different
boiling point temperature. I find it outrageous that in spending two minutes researching what that
specific temperature should be, I have found no evidence whatsoever of any scientific research
having been done in this area. In over 200 years, not a single scientist on earth has conducted an
experiment to establish the boiling point of iron gall ink, and/or published their findings in an easily
accessible public internet forum. This is unacceptable but, sadly, no surprise to me. Carl Sagan said it
best when he said that idiotic human beings don’t respect scientists enough and, as a result, we’re all
fucked. That’s the gist, at any rate. Having said that, I’ve now lost a fair degree of respect for
scientists myself, following this iron gall ink boiling-point debacle. I’m aware this is a footnote and
therefore not the ideal place to discuss such matters, so will talk more about this issue in a live
environment; please purchase a ticket before your earliest convenience and await my thoughts. GM

FN37 Not entirely paper. He can still hold the doll. GM

FN38 They’d moved him back into the water tank again. GM

FN39 Not the weather-related kind. GM

FN40 No, it’s seventeen ‘Randymans’. GM

FN41 Not strictly true from a medical standpoint, but works in this case as a subtle case of
foreshadowing. GM

FN42 See Portentum i.e. Tome 1 of this very anthology. I shouldn’t have to do this. GM

FN43 See Arabella Mathers, Tome 2 of this very anthology – I’m not doing this again. GM

FN44 Not the drug-addled kind. Say no to drugs. Never, ever take drugs. GM

FN45 No, but that plot will be covered in a later book, so consider the idea copyrighted. GM

FN46 A series of small holes around a conventional toilet bowl. Water flowing from each rim hole
washes over the bowl’s surface and in the process refills the toilet bowl itself. In Randy’s case, this is
located in the area of his anus. GM

FN47 A loud noise or vibration caused by pipes being turned on or off, itself caused by the sudden
surging or stopping of water within said pipes. GM

FN48 See Type-Face (Dark Lord of the Prolix) in Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome. In fact, buy it
rather than see it. Then read it. GM

FN49 I.e., the Randyman. GM

FN50 Which took the form of a black and yellow-spotted salamander’s tail. Again, see Portentum
in this very book. The first one. The first story. GM

FN51 This may seem anti-climactic given the ominous tone of the previous chapter ending, but it is
essential that you, the reader, keep turning the page. GM

FN52 She’d actually felt this before, during her previous deadly plunge, but the effect was
heightened now. GM

FN53 This ability had helped her before when she’d almost drowned while being submerged in a
previous chapter. I didn’t bother to say that then, because the chapter in question was working
perfectly without it. GM

FN54 Admittedly, it’s not fetid water like the liquid she’d been drowning in in that previous chapter,
but there is additional risk to her safety in the current scene, which distinguishes it sufficiently from
the first. Both scenes, I will add, are overflowing with intrinsic literary merit. GM

FN55 See previous note. This detail is wholly intentional and not a ‘quick fix’. GM

FN56 Again, see Tome 1 of this book if you really can’t remember crucial details that other
ordinary readers have no trouble whatsoever in recalling. Go sort your attention span. I bet you’re in
your twenties, right? Then buck up. GM

FN57 The employment of the word for ‘female canine’ here is fine and socially acceptable, the
word in question being spoken by a decent lady character and directed at a former indecent lady
character. GM
 Ready for your next read?

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