Winston Donahue
(Gavin Newton)
6th May 1924
As you sit down for breakfast you see the newspapers are full of stories of the meteorite shower that reached all over the United Kingdom. A number of people had a few rocks crash-land in their gardens or through their houses, and the shower itself played havoc with the radio, causing interference that all but obliterated the BBC’s evening broadcast from Alexander Palace. You missed last night’s storm because your were in your barn trying to bolt the wings on your plane, but reading the newspaper you see the meteor shower is due to continue.
Turning the next page you see an article about Carter the Great being back in town after a stint in America. He was a magician of some skill by all accounts but a bit of a showman and known for being keen on excess publicly. Last year he spent six whole hours suspended above the Thames in a wicker basket with little more than a chamber pot and a dry Martini. It was done to provide a spiritual focus for all mankind, according to him. You thought he was an idiot then but when you read his story a few days ago that he had planned to stop the comet from hitting the earth with the power of positive thought you had upgraded him to a total loon.
The story on the next page catches your eye: it’s about a vicious murder at the British Museum. It looks like a burglary went wrong, with the night watchman interrupting the killers and paying for it with his life in a brutal way. All the burglars got away with was an artefact that could only be worth a few hundred pounds and only to a collector. A chill goes through you at the thought of how low some people could go for a little money.
“Well, this is bit of a damp squib!”
You agree with you mate Bill Biggs and stare back at the sky. Your old friend Elizabeth Mayland had invited Bill and yourself to her house in London to watch the light show, but all you can see at the moment is a bank of rolling clouds with flashes of light behind them.
“At least the glowing means the meteors are burning up in the atmosphere,” Elizabeth says. She doesn’t sound completely convinced.
“It only needs one to get through in one piece,” you remark has you fiddle with your lucky flight goggles. Not the height of fashion in London but you always had them with you. You knock back a whisky. “There’s an awful lot of them travelling through the sky…”
Elizabeth and Bill give the sky a nervous glance. Lizzie seems to fight the urge to run and settles instead for a steady walk to the house to refill her Pims. You laugh quietly to yourself; after all you were only having a laugh-
The noise is the first thing that warns you, a high pitched hissing whine that sets your hair on end. Brickwork explodes next to you in a cloud of dust; a shockwave hurls you off your feet, razor sharp thorns fill your world, sudden heat dries your eyes and scorches your throat. Then with an abrupt deafening whump, the chaos ends.
Cascading brickwork is the only noise in the air. Slowly, gingerly, you shake to stars from your eyes then hiss in pain: for some odd reason you seem to be sitting in a rosebush. “God, that whisky has a kick to it!” you mutter as you climb out from the bush, your movements unsure. You brush the thorns from your clothing and look around. Most of the end part of the kitchen is gone, a hole blasted through the house into the garden.
“Winston? Bill?” Elizabeth calls weakly from the ruined doorway. She coughs against the haze in the air and shakes the dust from her hair.
“You in one piece?” you ask. “Where’s Bill?”
“Here.” Biggs sits up from under a pile of earth, looking as if he has just risen from the dead. “I have really got a headache now…” He looks around blearily. “What the hell happened?”
You examine the scene thinking to same thing. You and Bill were thrown either side of a furrow that had been dug from house to the end of the garden, getting deeper with every foot travelled. The earth is baked hard, cooked like clay in an oven. And then you see it: there at the end of the ditch is a rock, the size of your fist, covered in cracks that glow bright green.
“Okay,” you mutter to the sky. “I really was only kidding, you know.”
7th May
After spending most of the morning helping Elizabeth make arrangements for the house to be repaired and the garden to be re-landscaped, you turn your attention to the rock. It sat there, still in the wooden box where Bill placed it last night. You wonder if his hand was any better, though remind yourself that you did warn him not to pick it up, despite his assurances that he could not feel any heat coming from it. According to him afterwards when he attempted to touch the rock he received a sharp wave of intense cold which numbed his hand senseless. It took an hour for sensation to return and only partially.
You stare at the rock: was it dangerous at all? According to Elizabeth, the only person who could possible know the answer was her cousin Professor Richard Harker. She drives to The Astronomical Society to find out. You and Bill join her: Bill to find out if by touching the rock his legs were going to drop off or something; and you because you haven’t anything better to do.
You pull up outside the building. You have never been to The Astronomical Society before but you somehow expected something a little more impressive than an office in a block of other businesses. The three of you climb the stairs to the top, each floor you pass becomes more and more a graveyard of fail business ventures until the top floor has only The Society and nothing else. You knock and enter. Harker’s assistant Shannon sits behind a desk. He looks up, recognises Elizabeth, and waves you through to Harker’s office with a smile.
You enter to find the place in disarray, filled in every gap with rolls of maps and star charts. A man you assume to be Harker comes walking swiftly out of a store room, his arms full of stuff. He drops everything when he sees the three of you.
“Lizzie? Good lord, Lizzie old girl, what are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in months! And who are these gentlemen? Is everything all right?”
“Things are fine,” says Elizabeth “These are my good friends Bill Biggs and Winston Donahue. You look – busy.”
“Very busy. I’m getting ready to leave for Wales in the morning. It sounds like a large piece landed in some place called Llangadfan. According to the locals the noise was like that of a bomb going off; the whole place lit up with the impact! Plus it set alight to most of the forest which I think they’ve got under control now. It could be a major discovery, Lizzie!”
“I’m glad for you. Do you want to see another for your collection?” She hands him the box. Brow furrowing, he quickly opens it. His gasp speaks volumes. “It fell last night, nearly killing us and nearly demolishing the house and the garden. As it is the birdbath will never stand straight again.”
Richard’s eyes are locked on the rock. “It’s beautiful! That glowing it’s doing there-”
“Don’t touch it!” Bill warns. “It freezes your hand solid!”
Harker snatches his fingers away from the box. “Freezes? That’s… unusual.”
“Is it safe?”
“Oh. Yes. Sure.” He puts the lid back on. “Probably.”
You raise an eyebrow at him “Probably?"
“Nobody got any hair falling out or anything odd like that? Good. Like I said, it’s safe then. It’s quite remarkable! I only wished I had more time to look at it.” Richard hands the box back to Elizabeth.
“You don’t want it?”
“Of course I do, but I’ve got larger fish to dynamite at the moment and not much time to do so. You keep hold of it for now for safe keeping, wait until I get back.”
“How long are you going?”
“Just a week, I’ll phone you when I return. I tell you, Lizzie; with your rock and the larger one, hopefully, plus any I get via the advert I’m going to put in the newspaper, this could be the making of my career.” Harker picks up the things he dropped and throws them haphazardly into a cardboard box. “Everything seems to be working well at the moment.” He face falls. “The only bit of bad news is that Carter fellow: he came to visit me today to ask all about the meteorites. I gave him a bit of a brush off and told him to come back tomorrow. He really is a self publicity-seeking pain! What with everything that happened I think the whole world is going mad about comets!”
You wait patiently as Elizabeth spends a few more minutes catching up with family news but even you can tell Richard is dying to get packed. The three of you leave him to his work and go and find a pub.
17th May
You hear from Elizabeth. She is beginning to worry about Richard. A week has passed since he went to Wales and still there was no word from him. Had he found something of importance and decided to stay on longer? If that was true Harker would have sent word to someone. It seemed out of character. She had tried phoning his assistant but got no answer. She did receive a call from Doctor Ogilvie, an old friend of Richard’s who works at the Greenwich Observatory and someone she has met a couple of times. He is equally as concerned about Harker and feels equally as useless.
19th May
You receive another phone call from Elizabeth early in the morning. Last night she got a call from a distressed-sounding Ogilvie. He went to The Astronomical Society figuring Richard must have sent word there, if even to let his assistant know that he would be away for longer. He found Shannon murdered, horribly mutilated. He also found a screwed up bit of paper which turned out to be a telegram from Harker, dated the 11th. Judging by the number of fingerprints over it Ogilvie reckoned other people had read it – like the murderers. He turned over the information to the police and pressed on them the danger to Richard, and they have promised to contact the local bobbie down in Llangadfan to go and check on the professor.
You decide to go back to London, knowing you can stay at your cousin’s place as he is on holiday. By the sounds of things Elizabeth could do with a friend nearby. As you are crossing London Bridge you notice a black car following you. At first you think it is coincidence, but you take a few turns that make a complete circle yet the car is still there. You dive down a few alleys, fear beginning to rise as you wonder about who they are. Could they be behind Harker’s silence? You shake your head. No, you’re over reacting. You look back. The black car is nowhere to be seen. Part of you breathes a sigh of relief and puts it down to coincidence, but the sliver of fear remains.
21st May
You meet in the evening with Elizabeth and Bill at the Mayship Club for a meal and light conversation, but all talk is about a trip to Wales: Elizabeth has decided to go to find Harker for herself. Bill asks why and she tells of the sudden disinterest of the police in finding him despite the fact that his assistant had been brutally killed and he had seemingly vanished. With no one doing anything it looked like it was up to her to do something.
Knowing it was useless trying to change her mind once it was set, you near insist on coming with her as does Bill. She grudgingly agrees, and after the meal you head back to your cousin’s house to pack. The streets are beginning to become shrouded in fog, the mist turning sounds dull, and you cannot help but start at the shadows. Upon opening the door you can tell something is not right. Being careful, you turn on all the lights and pick a walking stick out of the stand to use as a club. You enter the front room. Everything is in disarray, with drawers open and things scattered and broken. Before you can curse, you notice the china collection is untouched, merely thrown around. It was obviously expensive. Whoever broke in clearly did not do so for money.
Suddenly worried for your friends, you try phoning Bill but get no answer. Becoming even more concerned you call Elizabeth. She answers, much to your relief. She has been burgled as well yet nothing has been taken. You tell her about Bill and she quickly makes a decision to meet you at his house. It might be a worry about nothing but neither of you want to take the risk.
You pull up outside Bill’s house at the same moment as Elizabeth, and you both run inside as you see his front door wide open. The place is in a mess like your house. A pool of blood lies in the doorway to the kitchen. Bill lies in a heap in the hallway. You rush to his side and feel for a pulse, shouting his name, fearing the worse. He groans as his eyes flicker open, reaching for the back of his head. You touch the egg size bump there but apart from that he seems in one piece.
Bill sits up, shaking his head clear. His words are slurred at first but they quickly become clearer as he explains what happened. As he entered the house he noticed the place had been turned over and was about to call the police when a figure in black robes leapt from the shadows. He fought him off, using his dentist tools as weapons, but just when he thought it was over he was struck from behind, knocking him to his knees. Then another robed man stepped out of the kitchen, brandishing a wicked looking dagger. It was then he got whack on the back of the head, and the next thing he knew was when you were waking him. He does not have a clue where the blood came from.
You call the police and explain everything, telling of the burglaries, the attack, the blood, the knife, the attempted murder. But again they almost appear uninterested, and all they can say is: “We’ll look into it”. Disgusted by their attitude, you give up. Elizabeth decides staying together until morning might be a safer option, and after picking up your suitcase the three of you head back to her home through the thickening fog.
You are only minutes from Elizabeth’s house when Bill decides to speak. “I still say we should’ve insisted on seeing the chief constable!”
She glances in her rear view mirror at him in the backseat. “It wouldn’t have done any good.”
“Why?”
You looked back. “Because I did insist!” The car starts crossing Tower Bridge and you absently note the fog creeping along the surface of the water. “They simply didn’t want to know.”
“Just what is going on?” Elizabeth mutters aloud. “God, Richard, I hope you’re all right-“
A violent impact on the roof make the car slide to a halt, the screeching of the tyres nearly bursting your eardrums. Then everything is still, only the quiet tick over of the engine breaks the silence. You stare at each other, trying to work out what happened. Then you look up and see two large foot-size dents in the roof.
“My bloody car!” Elizabeth shouts, jumping out of the door to see what caused the damage. You get out, as does Bill, and together you look around.
“Maybe you hit something,” you venture but Elizabeth silences you with a glare.
“I hit nothing! Something hit us! Did you not see the dents?”
Bill sighs quietly. “I suppose reporting this to the police isn’t going to help much?”
You begin to shrug when Bill suddenly goes flying, landing in a slide across the road. You see Elizabeth drop under a blow and you rush to help her, but before you can get near you are thrown back, your throat being squeezed. The fog eddies around the unseen attacker, making a general shape far larger than a man, and fear hits you as hard as any punch. You gasp for air, clutching at your neck, and manage a few mouthfuls. Suddenly Bill in his front of you, hurling punches and kicks wildly, and you hear them connect with a wet, fleshy slap. An animal-like howl splits the air which you hope is in pain. Elizabeth comes running to help but then Bill is thrown in her way and they both go down in a crumpled heap. He rushes to his feet to help you again. He flails at the unseen attacker but all in vain; you are lifted off your feet, hovering in mid air like a thrashing puppet, vision beginning to dim. Then everything comes back into perfect clarity as a hammer of pain slams into your shoulders. You scream as puncture wounds appear. Blood starts to flow, but upwards, filling invisible veins, starting to reveal more than a shape.
The roar of an engine interrupts your agony and you stare in confused terror at Elizabeth driving towards you. Her plan becomes clear and, gritting your teeth against the pain, you managed to twist yourself around. She pulls the handbrake and slides the back of the car around, wheels squealing as they burn. You feel the impact travel through the unseen body; the hold on your shoulders vanishes, dropping you. The barrier of the bridge shatters behind you as the invisible weight is sent flying.
Taking a deep breaths, you get to your feet, holding your wounds. They hurt like hell but you’ll live. Elizabeth gets out of the car, wincing as if she is frightened at what she might see. When she finally sees you she blows a sigh of relief, and you give her a nod of thanks.
“Where did it go?” Elizabeth asks.
“It smashed through the barrier,” Bill gestures. The three of you gather in the gap and stare down at the Thames, but all you can see is fog.
“Is it dead?” she asks quietly.
“If the water doesn’t kill him, the rats will,” Bill mutters.
There is a pause before you decide to speak again. “Can anyone tell me what in god’s sweet name of all that is holy and bright what exactly ‘It’ was?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth answers. “And I’ve got the feeling it isn’t something I want to know in my life time.” She lets a breath out slowly. “With this, with Mr Shannon, with Bill’s attacker… We have to find Richard. Not only to make sure if he is all right, but to find out some answers. This all seems to revolve all around him and I’m not accepting it as a coincidence. Winston, let’s get you to a hospital.”
You wave her away, the movement bringing a ripple of pain you manage to hide. “No. Just get me a whisky and a couple of aspirin and I’ll be as right as rain in the morning. Anyway, I somewhat get the feeling it isn’t safe to be in London at the moment…”
“For any of us,” adds Bill. “So when do we leave for Wales?”
Elizabeth looks west. “Now.”
22nd May
You take turns to make the long drive to Wales, each continuously checking for any following vehicles, and by the time you reach Llangadfan you are all quite ready for a rest. You spot a place called The Cann Office Public House and stop for some food and a drink. Feeling suspicious of everyone, you pick a table by the back of the wall.
After eating, you are about to get up to inquire about the local policeman when the door opens and two men walk in. One of the men glances at Elizabeth twice.
“Lizzie?” he ventures. “Elizabeth Mayland, is it you?”
She looks up from the drink she was pretending to have. She is wary at first but then she recognises the man. “Mister Ogilvie! Oh it’s good to see a friendly face! I assume you’re here to look for Richard as well?”
He nods. “I think he might be-”
“-in some trouble?” she finishes for him. “Yes, I’m beginning to see that now. We’ve had some trouble-”
“-as well,” he finishes for her. Ogilvie exchanges looks with his colleague.
“There seems to be a lot of that going round,” says the man. “I’m getting a drink. Anybody want one?”
Elizabeth introduces yourself and Bill, and Christian points out his friend Arthur Catt to you. He quickly explains about the meeting he had planned with a policeman and invites you to join him.
The door opens again and you hope it is the officer. But much to your surprise Charles Carter, Mr ‘The Great’ himself, walks in. He pauses as he sees Christian, then approaches gingerly. “Mr Ogilvie,” he nods.
Christian doesn’t shake his extended hand. “Now I’m guessing you are not here by chance,” he replies coolly. “Are you really this pathetic in your attempts for publicity that you would follow me?”
Carter is already shaking his head. “Please, Mr Ogilvie, this has nothing to do with that. In fact I wish I had never heard about the meteorites! I’ve had a break in, been nearly killed, I can’t go back to my home, my life! The only connection I’ve got to all of it is the comet, and that means Harker, and that means you!”
“We’ve been attacked as well!” says Elizabeth. “By black robed men. And something else…”
“Something not very nice,” you add, grimacing as you touch your shoulders.
Christian bits his lip. “Me and Arthur had a spot of bother with something not very nice as well.”
The door opens again and this time it is the policeman along with a shifty looking fellow. Christian gives him a nod and a wave. “Are you Mr Ogilvie?” The policeman shakes his hand. “I’m PC Gray, we spoke on the phone.”
“Pleasure. Can we go to and find Harker now? I’ve just received news that has me doubly worried.”
“Of course.” The policeman gestures to the shifty man. “This is Thomas Moore who will be guiding us to the cottage Harker has rented. It’s in a nearby forest but it’s a bit of a maze getting there.”
“Excuse me, Officer” a voice interrupts. A man stands behind your small group. “I couldn’t help overhearing, but did you mention a small cottage in the forest?”
The policeman nods. “And who might you be, sir?”
“I’m Peter Roberts, Estate Agent.” The man motions towards a rather wealthy looking couple seated nearby. Their servants stand a discrete distance away. “I have been appointed by the estate of the late Mr Joseph Lewis to sell his land and property and the Earl and his betrothed were to view it today. However the key holder, Mr Dafydd Jones, has advised me that the chap who recently rented the property for a week has not returned the key and by all accounts may still be there. I wonder if I could have some help with directions to the cottage, and if necessary evict the trespasser-”
“Poppycock!” Christian snorts.
“Richard’s no trespasser!” Elizabeth begins hotly but PC Gray holds up a hand for quiet.
“Now, now, let’s all stay calm.” The policeman brushes some dust off his lapels. “I’m sure this is all some big misunderstanding. Let’s sort all this mess out. Moore, lead the way.”
The shifty man mutters something under his breath which doesn’t sound too pleasant and motions for everyone to follow him. Setting off with your entourage, including a hesitant Carter, you all drive in your vehicles to the entrance of the forest before setting off on foot in search of Professor Richard Harker...
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