for the kin of the night
dark light
DARK LIGHT
Professor Smith folded his umberella and looked up as a peal of thunder rent the clouds. a leak in the guttering sent a cascade of water over his face, and he cused as he tried to sidestep it.
He tackled the malfunctioning security panel at the main doors of the tower block, and pressed the door buzzer. No reply.
He pressed the button combination again, then pressed the buzzer button impatiently. The rust and grease encrusted speaker grill rattled as a distorted electronic voice grated out “'hold yer horses, I'm doing my best”
He pressed closer to the door, trying to avoid the pouring rain that flooded from broken guttering to empty itself on any poor individual unfortunate enough to be stood in the doorway.
The door hummed and the professor pushed it open gingerly. He strode into the foyer and eyed the elevator suspiciously. He pressed the call button and waited.
After what seemed like a couple of ice ages, the elevator pinged like a microwave oven, and the doors half opened. The one working neon tube in its roof flickered, revealing a tiny litter covered floor and an unpleasant smell of ammonia.
The professor shook his head and looked at the address written on the scrap envelope in his hand.
“Lichfield Towers – Flat 11 b. Ten floors up” He looked from the stairs to the elevator, shook his head, and started up the stairwell.
“You took your time” Dorothy said cheekily as she opened the door to let the exhausted little man into the flat.
“You might have warned me about the state of the lift.” the Professor replied in an accent that sounded decidedly Scottish.
The Professor looked around the room. In stark contrast to the seedy dilapidated corridors outside, the flat was clean, tidy, and bore more of a resemblance to the inside of a cosy country cottage than a high rise apartment.
“So this is your grandmother's home?” he stated. “Quite comfortable once you get in” He stared through the window at the pouring rain. A flash of lightening suddenly illuminated the shiny wet rooftops of the town below.
“Yeah – Nan's away at Aunty Beryl's for a week. I promised I'd look after her budgie.”
As Dorothy retired to the kitchen, the Professor wandered over to the birdcage in the corner, poking his beak-like nose at the bars as he made a chirping noise. He rattled the cage and frowned.
“I'd say you're doing a bad job of it – this bird is dead,”
Dorothy returned with two cups of tea, pushing one into the Professors hands as she sipped the other.
“Is it? That'll save me some time then.”
The professor took two sips of the tea, then put down the cup as he started measuring the walls of the room, paying close attention to the corners.
“Nothing out of the ordinary here” he muttered.
“You just wait” Dorothy replied.
“I mean there are no geometric anachronisms that might account for the disturbances you spoke of. But something is wrong here. There are massive temporal fluctuations in the vicinity.”
He glanced down at the cup he had just put down a moment ago – it was empty.
“How long would you say this has been going on”
“Dunno – but Nan was talking to Joey and feeding him cuttlefish this morning – and he died last year.”
“Last year? I'd say it's only been dead a day or two at ….”
The Professor was interrupted by a loud chirp. They both turned to see the budgerigar alive and well in it's cage.
“It's been doing that all afternoon. Just before you arrived I saw Grandad sitting in that chair.”
The Professor took a small beeping device out of his pocket and waved it over the offending chair and bird cage.
“Ah – heavy tachyon bombardment. But from what?”
“I did a bit of research at the local library like you asked. This place has quite a bad rep'”
Dorothy took a sheaf of photocopies from her backpack and spread them out on a coffee table.
“they called it the cursed tower when the block was first built. Three men died in accidents during the construction.”
“Before that, it was just a farmhouse on a hill – but get this “Local children avoided it, saying it was haunted. The last farmer committed suicide, and it was abandoned for eighteen years after that. “
“!n 1937, another farmer murdered his wife and kids, then killed himself.”
“Hey – I remember Nan telling me that Mr Maxwell in the next flat killed his girlfriend last month – this place just attracts death and murder.”
“oh – look at this. In 1657 a couple living in a cottage on Barrow Hill – that's where the estate got its name – were charged and hanged for witchcraft.”
The Professor rested his chin on his hands as he pondered.
“And you say that it's been escalating of late?”
“Yeah – that's why Nan's gone to Aunty's for a while – bad dreams, and she keeps hearing voices. At first I thought she was just going ga-ga – till I saw the dark figure.”
“A tall dark shadow with glowing red eyes?”
“Yes Professor – how did you know, I never mentioned that?”
“You didn't need to – I can see it standing in the doorway behind you.”
A flash of lightening was punctuated by an almost simultaneous peal of thunder.
Dorothy jumped up in alarm, a chill running down her spine as the terrifying spectre glared at her, it's glowing ember eyes boring into her soul.
Her chest seemed to tighten, as if a great weight was pressing against it, and the air became thick, cloying, and almost oily.
The Professor stood up and held his umberella in front of him like it was a holy symbol, whilst intoning some strange incantation in a language totally unknown to Dorothy.
The professor suddenly seemed to grow in stature, appeared to fill the room with his presence as he charged towards the spectre, screaming “BEGONE FROM HERE!”.
The shadowy creature let out an awful screetch and vanished.
“What was that?” Dorothy asked
“Nothing.” replied the Professor. “At least nothing real. It's merely a negative psychic manifestation.”
“Of what?”
“Of negativity. Nothing more, just an essence of negativity – not even a sentient being at all.”
The Professor took hold of Dorothy's shoulders and looked into her eyes.
“What did you feel when it looked at you, describe it”
Dorothy felt reluctant to relive it, but felt reassured by the Professor's presence.
“Terrified, stifled, like.. it was oppressive.”
“And?” he encouraged.
“ It was hungry, consuming..”
He wriggled his fingers, gesturing for her to give him more.
“It felt … unearthly.. not of this world”
“Ah!” he exclaimed in triumph, “excellent, now we are getting to it.”
“So it's an alien – wicked.”
“No nothing so simple. It's not a living being. Not entirely alien either.”
“Well make your mind up, is it from outer space or not?”
There was another flash of lightening and a crash of lightening, as if the storm was centred upon the tower block.
“The energy is alien, but the manifestation itself is of Earthly origin.”
“So something landed here hundreds of years ago, and somebody used it's power to create that bogeyman?”
“Or crashed. Something like that. Perhaps. “ The Professor seemed unsure.
Dorothy stepped through from the kitchen. “Here you go Professor. What do you want salt for?”
“I didn't ask for salt. How did you get into the kitchen without walking past me?”
The professor turned back to the living room to see Dorothy sitting still sitting in the chair by the window, frozen in time.
He turned back to the Dorothy coming from the kitchen, but there was nobody there.
“This is getting worse!” he scanned the room with his odd little device again.
“The readings are almost off the scale – the whole room is saturated with tachyon particles.”
“But why now Professor? Is something coming back for whatever was left here?”
“No – whatever is causing all this is somehow tied to the past. And yet.... I don't know, it's more like fallout.”
The professor sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. “Are you smoking a pipe?”
“Of course not Professor.” she frowned a moment. “Grandad used to smoke a pipe.”
Dorothy suddenly shuddered and leaped out of her seat. Sitting exactly where she had been sitting was a frightened looking old man with a pipe about to drop from his sagging jaw.
“Professor!” she cried plaintively.
“Quick! Get me some salt from the kitchen.”
Dorothy ran to the kitchen and returned a moment later with a salt pot.
“Here you go Professor. What do you want salt for?”
For a moment, the Professor felt frozen in time.
“Time is getting mixed up, the disturbance is increasing. Watch.”
He held the pot over a circle of salt on the floor that Dorothy had not noticed before. As he waved the pot over it in a circular motion, the salt lifted from the floor and poured into the nozzel of the pot.
“Wicked!” exclaimed Dorothy. “How did you do that?”
“I didn't do it – time did it.!”
He beat his head in frustration. “Of course! Why didn't I realise?”
His eyes widened.
“Quickly, we have to get out of here. NOW!”
He manually grabbed the girl and with surprising strength for his size half dragged, half carried her out of the flat towards the stairs.
The lights seemed to dim, as though there was a fog of darkness growing through the building. Not smoke, but a growing darkness.
“What's happening Professor?”
“I've made a grave miscalculation, we must get out before it's too late.”
As they reached the stairwell, the Professor grabbed Dorothy by her waist, and leaped onto the banister with her on his lap.
“It isn't an effect from something that has happened – its the side effect from something that is going to happen.”
“What?” queried Dorothy as they rode down the banister at a frightening speed, “Are you going to start making sense or have you completely flipped?”
”Time pollution” the Professor explained. “Normal space-time is being polluted by a heavy tachyon fallout.”
They almost fell off the banister as they swerved around a corner, passing the same fire extinguisher five times.
“So what is it? A time travel experiment gone wrong?”
“?gnorw enog tnemirepxe levart A ? ti tahw oS”
Suddenly they began to slide backwards up the banister.
The Professor gripped Dorothy hard with one arm whilst he fumbled in his pocket and brought out his scanning device. As soon as he opened his hand, it flew up out of his hand to explode in a bright blue flash above them, and they slid downwards again.
“So what is it? A time travel experiment gone wrong?”
“No, nothing as predictable – that could have been expected and prevented.”
They reached the bottom, but the foyer was filled with a throng of moaning phantoms from different ages.
“Blimey – it's a George Romero convention down here.”
"They are being drawn here by a force stronger than gravity.” Explained the Professor as he flung the salt pot at the far wall.
The glass shattered sending a shower of salt over the ghouls – and the whole scene instantly changed for one of devastation and chaos. The foyer was an inferno of twisted metal, concrete and flames.
“Gordon Bennett! - How do we get through that?”
“If I'm right” replied the Professor, “we won't have to.”
He grabbed her hand and ran into the inferno.
It was like running through treacle, a slow motion event that drained them of all energy. It was if reality itself was trying to hold them back as time fought against their efforts.
And yet, even as they slowly ran into the chaos, the flames shrank back, and concrete stanchions rose with the rubble and debris that seemed to be sucked back into it's rightful place.
“Jump” shouted the Professor as he leaped through the broken doorway, Dorothy following just in time as a million shards of shattered glass rose up from the ground and coalesced into place to form an unbroken sheet on the security door.
Dorothy and the Professor picked themsleves up from the wet ground.
“Run – it's not over yet”
They both ran – easier now the effect of the time distortion was weakening, and soon they gained so much momentum, they fell over their own feet and rolled halfway down the hill.
“Are we safe now?” Dorothy asked, soaking wet and covered in scratches and bruises from head to toe.
The Professor picked up his Panama hat and pointed to the tower block, a dark mass that was the centre of a dozen lightening bolts, like the centre of a Tesla coil.
“Watch”
As the sky lit up from the lightening flashes, a black glowing meteor – like a negative image – struck the top of the tower block, and the top floor exploded. There was a howling wind, and the lightening around the tower seemed to intensify for a moment, and then stop completely.
All that was left now was a burning building,
“But there's people in there. They'll burn!”
Dorothy sobbed as she heard screams, and falling masonry from within the building.
“There's nothing we can do.” replied the Professor. “I'm sorry – by the time I realised what was happening, it was already too late – we barely got out in time ourselves.”
“What did happen Professor – I still don't understand?”
“It was a dark matter meteor - very small, very rare – but utterly devastating”
“Dark matter? Wait, I've heard about that stuff – its super dense isn't it? “
“That was only a tiny fragment – but enough to warp time, and pollute the immediate area with tachyon radiation.”
The professor brought his odd little device out of his pocket and walked towards the conflagration with it held in front of him.
“See not a blip – it's totally normal space now. The effects of the blast and radiation spread backwards through time instead of forwards.
“Hold on – didn't I see that gadget of yours blow up in there?”
“Yes – did do, will do. Time is funny like that.”
“So how come you still got it?”
“Side effect of the time distortion. Here, have it” he tossed the device at her dismissively.
Dorothy caught it and tried to read the glowing readout.
“Ow! It's hot – hey, it's not going to explode is it?”
“Of course it is” the Professor smirked.
Dorothy yelped and dropped the device – which promptly winked out of existence.
“As I said – a side effect of the time distortion”
He put his arm over her shoulder and led her away as the first of the fire engines arrived to put out a perfectly normal fire.
“Time we were gone.,”
The End
Professor Smith folded his umberella and looked up as a peal of thunder rent the clouds. a leak in the guttering sent a cascade of water over his face, and he cused as he tried to sidestep it.
He tackled the malfunctioning security panel at the main doors of the tower block, and pressed the door buzzer. No reply.
He pressed the button combination again, then pressed the buzzer button impatiently. The rust and grease encrusted speaker grill rattled as a distorted electronic voice grated out “'hold yer horses, I'm doing my best”
He pressed closer to the door, trying to avoid the pouring rain that flooded from broken guttering to empty itself on any poor individual unfortunate enough to be stood in the doorway.
The door hummed and the professor pushed it open gingerly. He strode into the foyer and eyed the elevator suspiciously. He pressed the call button and waited.
After what seemed like a couple of ice ages, the elevator pinged like a microwave oven, and the doors half opened. The one working neon tube in its roof flickered, revealing a tiny litter covered floor and an unpleasant smell of ammonia.
The professor shook his head and looked at the address written on the scrap envelope in his hand.
“Lichfield Towers – Flat 11 b. Ten floors up” He looked from the stairs to the elevator, shook his head, and started up the stairwell.
“You took your time” Dorothy said cheekily as she opened the door to let the exhausted little man into the flat.
“You might have warned me about the state of the lift.” the Professor replied in an accent that sounded decidedly Scottish.
The Professor looked around the room. In stark contrast to the seedy dilapidated corridors outside, the flat was clean, tidy, and bore more of a resemblance to the inside of a cosy country cottage than a high rise apartment.
“So this is your grandmother's home?” he stated. “Quite comfortable once you get in” He stared through the window at the pouring rain. A flash of lightening suddenly illuminated the shiny wet rooftops of the town below.
“Yeah – Nan's away at Aunty Beryl's for a week. I promised I'd look after her budgie.”
As Dorothy retired to the kitchen, the Professor wandered over to the birdcage in the corner, poking his beak-like nose at the bars as he made a chirping noise. He rattled the cage and frowned.
“I'd say you're doing a bad job of it – this bird is dead,”
Dorothy returned with two cups of tea, pushing one into the Professors hands as she sipped the other.
“Is it? That'll save me some time then.”
The professor took two sips of the tea, then put down the cup as he started measuring the walls of the room, paying close attention to the corners.
“Nothing out of the ordinary here” he muttered.
“You just wait” Dorothy replied.
“I mean there are no geometric anachronisms that might account for the disturbances you spoke of. But something is wrong here. There are massive temporal fluctuations in the vicinity.”
He glanced down at the cup he had just put down a moment ago – it was empty.
“How long would you say this has been going on”
“Dunno – but Nan was talking to Joey and feeding him cuttlefish this morning – and he died last year.”
“Last year? I'd say it's only been dead a day or two at ….”
The Professor was interrupted by a loud chirp. They both turned to see the budgerigar alive and well in it's cage.
“It's been doing that all afternoon. Just before you arrived I saw Grandad sitting in that chair.”
The Professor took a small beeping device out of his pocket and waved it over the offending chair and bird cage.
“Ah – heavy tachyon bombardment. But from what?”
“I did a bit of research at the local library like you asked. This place has quite a bad rep'”
Dorothy took a sheaf of photocopies from her backpack and spread them out on a coffee table.
“they called it the cursed tower when the block was first built. Three men died in accidents during the construction.”
“Before that, it was just a farmhouse on a hill – but get this “Local children avoided it, saying it was haunted. The last farmer committed suicide, and it was abandoned for eighteen years after that. “
“!n 1937, another farmer murdered his wife and kids, then killed himself.”
“Hey – I remember Nan telling me that Mr Maxwell in the next flat killed his girlfriend last month – this place just attracts death and murder.”
“oh – look at this. In 1657 a couple living in a cottage on Barrow Hill – that's where the estate got its name – were charged and hanged for witchcraft.”
The Professor rested his chin on his hands as he pondered.
“And you say that it's been escalating of late?”
“Yeah – that's why Nan's gone to Aunty's for a while – bad dreams, and she keeps hearing voices. At first I thought she was just going ga-ga – till I saw the dark figure.”
“A tall dark shadow with glowing red eyes?”
“Yes Professor – how did you know, I never mentioned that?”
“You didn't need to – I can see it standing in the doorway behind you.”
A flash of lightening was punctuated by an almost simultaneous peal of thunder.
Dorothy jumped up in alarm, a chill running down her spine as the terrifying spectre glared at her, it's glowing ember eyes boring into her soul.
Her chest seemed to tighten, as if a great weight was pressing against it, and the air became thick, cloying, and almost oily.
The Professor stood up and held his umberella in front of him like it was a holy symbol, whilst intoning some strange incantation in a language totally unknown to Dorothy.
The professor suddenly seemed to grow in stature, appeared to fill the room with his presence as he charged towards the spectre, screaming “BEGONE FROM HERE!”.
The shadowy creature let out an awful screetch and vanished.
“What was that?” Dorothy asked
“Nothing.” replied the Professor. “At least nothing real. It's merely a negative psychic manifestation.”
“Of what?”
“Of negativity. Nothing more, just an essence of negativity – not even a sentient being at all.”
The Professor took hold of Dorothy's shoulders and looked into her eyes.
“What did you feel when it looked at you, describe it”
Dorothy felt reluctant to relive it, but felt reassured by the Professor's presence.
“Terrified, stifled, like.. it was oppressive.”
“And?” he encouraged.
“ It was hungry, consuming..”
He wriggled his fingers, gesturing for her to give him more.
“It felt … unearthly.. not of this world”
“Ah!” he exclaimed in triumph, “excellent, now we are getting to it.”
“So it's an alien – wicked.”
“No nothing so simple. It's not a living being. Not entirely alien either.”
“Well make your mind up, is it from outer space or not?”
There was another flash of lightening and a crash of lightening, as if the storm was centred upon the tower block.
“The energy is alien, but the manifestation itself is of Earthly origin.”
“So something landed here hundreds of years ago, and somebody used it's power to create that bogeyman?”
“Or crashed. Something like that. Perhaps. “ The Professor seemed unsure.
Dorothy stepped through from the kitchen. “Here you go Professor. What do you want salt for?”
“I didn't ask for salt. How did you get into the kitchen without walking past me?”
The professor turned back to the living room to see Dorothy sitting still sitting in the chair by the window, frozen in time.
He turned back to the Dorothy coming from the kitchen, but there was nobody there.
“This is getting worse!” he scanned the room with his odd little device again.
“The readings are almost off the scale – the whole room is saturated with tachyon particles.”
“But why now Professor? Is something coming back for whatever was left here?”
“No – whatever is causing all this is somehow tied to the past. And yet.... I don't know, it's more like fallout.”
The professor sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. “Are you smoking a pipe?”
“Of course not Professor.” she frowned a moment. “Grandad used to smoke a pipe.”
Dorothy suddenly shuddered and leaped out of her seat. Sitting exactly where she had been sitting was a frightened looking old man with a pipe about to drop from his sagging jaw.
“Professor!” she cried plaintively.
“Quick! Get me some salt from the kitchen.”
Dorothy ran to the kitchen and returned a moment later with a salt pot.
“Here you go Professor. What do you want salt for?”
For a moment, the Professor felt frozen in time.
“Time is getting mixed up, the disturbance is increasing. Watch.”
He held the pot over a circle of salt on the floor that Dorothy had not noticed before. As he waved the pot over it in a circular motion, the salt lifted from the floor and poured into the nozzel of the pot.
“Wicked!” exclaimed Dorothy. “How did you do that?”
“I didn't do it – time did it.!”
He beat his head in frustration. “Of course! Why didn't I realise?”
His eyes widened.
“Quickly, we have to get out of here. NOW!”
He manually grabbed the girl and with surprising strength for his size half dragged, half carried her out of the flat towards the stairs.
The lights seemed to dim, as though there was a fog of darkness growing through the building. Not smoke, but a growing darkness.
“What's happening Professor?”
“I've made a grave miscalculation, we must get out before it's too late.”
As they reached the stairwell, the Professor grabbed Dorothy by her waist, and leaped onto the banister with her on his lap.
“It isn't an effect from something that has happened – its the side effect from something that is going to happen.”
“What?” queried Dorothy as they rode down the banister at a frightening speed, “Are you going to start making sense or have you completely flipped?”
”Time pollution” the Professor explained. “Normal space-time is being polluted by a heavy tachyon fallout.”
They almost fell off the banister as they swerved around a corner, passing the same fire extinguisher five times.
“So what is it? A time travel experiment gone wrong?”
“?gnorw enog tnemirepxe levart A ? ti tahw oS”
Suddenly they began to slide backwards up the banister.
The Professor gripped Dorothy hard with one arm whilst he fumbled in his pocket and brought out his scanning device. As soon as he opened his hand, it flew up out of his hand to explode in a bright blue flash above them, and they slid downwards again.
“So what is it? A time travel experiment gone wrong?”
“No, nothing as predictable – that could have been expected and prevented.”
They reached the bottom, but the foyer was filled with a throng of moaning phantoms from different ages.
“Blimey – it's a George Romero convention down here.”
"They are being drawn here by a force stronger than gravity.” Explained the Professor as he flung the salt pot at the far wall.
The glass shattered sending a shower of salt over the ghouls – and the whole scene instantly changed for one of devastation and chaos. The foyer was an inferno of twisted metal, concrete and flames.
“Gordon Bennett! - How do we get through that?”
“If I'm right” replied the Professor, “we won't have to.”
He grabbed her hand and ran into the inferno.
It was like running through treacle, a slow motion event that drained them of all energy. It was if reality itself was trying to hold them back as time fought against their efforts.
And yet, even as they slowly ran into the chaos, the flames shrank back, and concrete stanchions rose with the rubble and debris that seemed to be sucked back into it's rightful place.
“Jump” shouted the Professor as he leaped through the broken doorway, Dorothy following just in time as a million shards of shattered glass rose up from the ground and coalesced into place to form an unbroken sheet on the security door.
Dorothy and the Professor picked themsleves up from the wet ground.
“Run – it's not over yet”
They both ran – easier now the effect of the time distortion was weakening, and soon they gained so much momentum, they fell over their own feet and rolled halfway down the hill.
“Are we safe now?” Dorothy asked, soaking wet and covered in scratches and bruises from head to toe.
The Professor picked up his Panama hat and pointed to the tower block, a dark mass that was the centre of a dozen lightening bolts, like the centre of a Tesla coil.
“Watch”
As the sky lit up from the lightening flashes, a black glowing meteor – like a negative image – struck the top of the tower block, and the top floor exploded. There was a howling wind, and the lightening around the tower seemed to intensify for a moment, and then stop completely.
All that was left now was a burning building,
“But there's people in there. They'll burn!”
Dorothy sobbed as she heard screams, and falling masonry from within the building.
“There's nothing we can do.” replied the Professor. “I'm sorry – by the time I realised what was happening, it was already too late – we barely got out in time ourselves.”
“What did happen Professor – I still don't understand?”
“It was a dark matter meteor - very small, very rare – but utterly devastating”
“Dark matter? Wait, I've heard about that stuff – its super dense isn't it? “
“That was only a tiny fragment – but enough to warp time, and pollute the immediate area with tachyon radiation.”
The professor brought his odd little device out of his pocket and walked towards the conflagration with it held in front of him.
“See not a blip – it's totally normal space now. The effects of the blast and radiation spread backwards through time instead of forwards.
“Hold on – didn't I see that gadget of yours blow up in there?”
“Yes – did do, will do. Time is funny like that.”
“So how come you still got it?”
“Side effect of the time distortion. Here, have it” he tossed the device at her dismissively.
Dorothy caught it and tried to read the glowing readout.
“Ow! It's hot – hey, it's not going to explode is it?”
“Of course it is” the Professor smirked.
Dorothy yelped and dropped the device – which promptly winked out of existence.
“As I said – a side effect of the time distortion”
He put his arm over her shoulder and led her away as the first of the fire engines arrived to put out a perfectly normal fire.
“Time we were gone.,”
The End
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