

The Shorecliff Horror and Other Stories

Three weird tales by

Rufus Woodward

Olgada Press

Chapbook no. 3

2015

www.shorecliffhorror.com

First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by The Olgada Press, Edinburgh, UK.

All rights reserved

Copyright Olgada 2015

The right of Olgada to be identified as the authors of this book has been asserted by them under the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, by any means, with prior permission of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

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

Contents

The Shorecliff Horror

The Impossible City

Philippe and the Silver Flute

#  The Shorecliff Horror

I first moved into Shorecliff House on a bright, warm morning in early April. When I moved out again in the November of that same year, there were clouds gathering on the horizon and an icy wind threatening to rise from the North. In between those two days, I emerged from one nightmare only to fall right into another one. I found a friend who came to me from nowhere and then lost him again in circumstances I still find difficult to explain. I can't be sure how many of the things that happened to me there were real and how much I imagined. That whole period seems more dreamlike and unreal the more I think of it. I was like a ghost at that time, an insubstantial half man, and though I came out the other side more complete than before, I can't help but wonder what the cost of that healing was, both to me and to my friend, Lovecraft, my protector, my rescuer.

***

Lovecraft was never really my cat in the first place, not really. So individual and unusual a creature was he, in fact, that it was hard to imagine him ever having belonged to anyone. He padded through my door one day a week or so after I first moved into Shorecliff House and seemed to take a liking to the place. He sniffed at the carpets, peered under the furniture, crawled in and out of corners and small spaces I hardly even knew were there and, virtually ignoring me for the entire time, generally took his measure of the whole house. When all these investigations were complete he found himself a comfortable spot on the window ledge in the drawing room and sat there in the sun all afternoon while I worked at emptying boxes and cleaning floors and getting the place as close to habitable as was possible. I didn't pay him much attention and he paid me even less. Later that day I wandered through the room again looking for something item or other I'd mislaid and noticed that he'd left his perch and disappeared from the house entirely. I never knew where he went to or where he came from in the first place. He made his own rules right from the start. He was never really my cat at all.

After that first exploratory trip Lovecraft began a habit of coming back to Shorecliff House every few days or so. As the early weeks of my tenancy passed by so the gaps between these visits grew shorter and the length of his stays grew longer until eventually it became apparent that he had successfully insinuated himself as a permanent fixture in the fabric of the building as well as in my own daily routines and rituals. Just as I noticed every morning the loose catch on the bedroom window and would resolve to sometime do something about it, so each day I would trip over Lovecraft sitting on his favourite night time seat on the second from bottom step of the main staircase. Just as every day I would boil the kettle and warm my teapot carefully while making breakfast, so I would make sure to put a little something in Lovecraft's dish before I sat down myself. In these small ways we turned that old house into a home together, circling around one another like two old bachelor men, too wrapped up in their own habits and peculiarities to properly manage a relationship with the world outside, but perfectly able to get along with another similarly afflicted soul.

The way he settled into the house so quickly, finding just the right spot to catch the late afternoon sun, knowing just how to force the doorway into the scullery, you might have thought that he knew the place well before he arrived. You might have assumed, in fact, that he must have belonged to the previous owner and had somehow found his way back home. Except there were no previous owners to Shorecliff House. Before I came along the place, abandoned and neglected for years, had descended into a ramshackle half ruin, battered by a lifetime of winter storms and salty winds. Perhaps, then, you might have said, he belonged to a neighbour or some other visitor who dropped in on the house from time to time. Except there were no neighbours. Shorecliff stood on its own with no other houses or buildings of any sort as far as the eye could see, defended on one side by mile upon mile of heather clad moorland and on the other by steep cliffs facing east over the wild sea. To some, no doubt, it seemed a desolate sort of a place, and I suppose it was. To me, though, it was perfect, just exactly what I was looking for. To me it was place to escape to, to get away from cars and people, from noise and distractions and from all the trappings of a world I no longer felt equipped to deal with. I don't want to dwell too much on my own personal history here, that's not what this story is supposed to be about, but quiet isolation is what I was looking for at that time in my life, and Shorecliff provided it more perfectly than anywhere else I could imagine.

***

Even as cats go, Lovecraft was a peculiar sort of creature. He wasn't playful or obviously affectionate in any way and he didn't particularly like to be touched or held. He would accept food when it was offered, but usually with an uncertain sort of shrug as though he didn't want to be rude but would rather I hadn't gone to any bother. Almost everything he did was with a similar melancholic lack of enthusiasm, as though he were congenitally incapable of taking genuine pleasure from anything, as though life itself were a chore of unfortunate necessity and not one he need pretend to enjoy.

Described in this way you would think such an animal should make for a thoroughly unpleasant companion, particularly in a remote outpost like Shorecliff, but that's not the way he was at all. In spite of all these mannerisms, there was something ineffably loveable about Lovecraft. Never the most attractive of cats - he was far too lean and weather-beaten for that - there was nevertheless something about him that appealed to me in such a way that it was easy to take him to heart, to think of him as a friend and to feel that a room was empty if he were not in it with me. The way the world conspired against him, the way that every new day seemed to bring a new set of inconveniences, to confirm yet again his view of life as a series of trials and ordeals to be endured with as much dignity and as little fuss as possible – all of this triggered, in me at least, an unavoidable desire to look after the poor old thing, to do everything I could to ease his load and bring a little comfort his way.

I call him an 'old thing', but in truth I had no way of knowing how old a cat Lovecraft was when we stumbled across one another. His wiry build, the rich colour of his black coat, his bright green eyes – all these suggested a healthy adult cat of no more than middle age. While there was certainly no kitten in him anymore, neither was there anything about his physical appearance to suggest he was an animal of particularly advanced years. Nevertheless there remained so much about his manner - the way his tail drooped as he walked, his wearisome way of dragging himself through the day - that spoke of advanced old age. For myself, I assumed him to be a relatively young creature, in fact, but one made to feel old long before his time by the hardships of life. His whole manner, without doubt, was that of an old man, a kindly grandfather of a sort. While other cats might crave attention or be tempted to play with toys or dangled pieces of string, Lovecraft clearly viewed himself as above and beyond such things. Certainly, any efforts I made in that direction were every time doomed to complete, futile failure. No matter how hard I tried or how long I persevered I would receive no reaction from Lovecraft beyond an apologetic shrug, as though he appreciated the gesture but was sadly unable to oblige me by joining in. Such frivolous things seemed simply impossible for him to indulge in, so weighed down was he by the world and all the burdens it had put upon him.

There is so much I could say about this peculiar cat I came to call a friend, so many vivid memories, so many fond recollections, so many quirks of personality and disposition as to make him seem to me more individual, more human than any other creature I have ever encountered. I cannot go any further, however, without also recalling the strange characteristic that was, perhaps, his most peculiar trait of all.

Even at the best of times, Lovecraft would often give the impression of viewing his meals as an inconvenient intrusion, not at all something to which he would look forward with any relish. For days at a time, in fact, he would appear to eat barely a thing at all, surviving on water and the odd scrap or two of food he deigned to accept from the bowls I filled for him. This was not, I felt, a sign that he was a fussy or choosy eater – there seemed little in fact that he would not accept, given time – but rather an indication of his desire to lead as ascetic an existence as he could, to make as few compromises with the world as possible and to never admit to relying on any outside force so long as he could avoid it.

Once I accustomed myself to these habits of his, I gave little thought to filling his bowl in the morning and evening, knowing that, whatever I put there, he would take what he had to and leave whatever he could and that the precise items I offered him made no difference whatsoever to how much he would eat. It was in this assumption of his indifference that I attempted to fill his bowl one evening from a can of tuna I had opened for myself earlier that day. It seemed a harmless enough thing to do, but from the first moment I placed the bowl on the ground I knew that a mistake had been made. So extreme and unexpected was Lovecraft's reaction that to begin with I assumed that he was having a fit or a seizure of some description. His fur raised, his teeth bared, he scrambled into the corner of the kitchen hissing and spitting ferociously. His eyes lit up with a fire and colour I had never seen in him before. It was as though the animal in him, the wild creature, so precisely suppressed for most of the time, had taken over. He seemed a completely different creature and, to be frank, the sight of it terrified me. I tried to talk to him, to calm him down, but there was no recognition in his eyes anymore. I truly believe that if I had touched him or stepped too close to him at that moment he would have scratched the very flesh from my arms.

Not until I cleared the bowl out and threw the offending items into the waste bin outside did this possession pass from him. His fur settled, his posture returned to normal and his eyes narrowed again to their habitual sleepy alertness.

Soon enough I learned to expect much the same reaction from him whenever I brought fish of any sort into the house. The sight of it, the smell of it even was enough to send him scurrying and hiding under the nearest piece of furniture as if in fear of his life. Even that, in fact, understates the real, vivid strength of his aversion. Lovecraft did not merely refuse to eat fish, he loathed it to very core of his being, just as he loathed all sea creatures or anything, indeed, that came from the sea at all. If I brought home seashells or driftwood picked up during walks along the beach he would refuse to enter any room they were kept in. Even I myself, on days when these walks would leave me covered and washed over in spray from the wild waves that crashed into the cliffs below Shorecliff House, would be regarded with deep suspicion on my return home as though he could not quite reconcile the hated smell of the sea upon me with the person he thought he could recognise, as though he could not be entirely sure I was who I appeared to be.

Given the strength of this powerful aversion you might have thought that Shorecliff House, perched as it was at the top of steep cliffs facing over the wild North Sea, was not the ideal place for a cat such as Lovecraft to made his home. It is the strange way of life, however, that the things we are most afraid of are often the same things we are most strongly drawn towards. So it seemed with Lovecraft. For as much as he loathed the sea and all things in it, so also was he fascinated by it. Through long hours each day he would sit balanced on the ledge of the great drawing room picture window, staring out over the cliffs, listening to the waves crash down on the rocky beach below. During stormy weather in particular (of which there was much during our time at the house) he would pace that window ledge endlessly, back and forth, flinching anxiously at each new battering from the wind, staring nervously into the grey world outside as though looking for something he was afraid to find. So regular were these habits and so predictable that I would joke that he seemed to have more guard dog in him than cat sometimes. In truth there was something about the way he patrolled that window ledge and peered out over the cliffs each day that did suggest a guardian standing at a threshold, a watchman performing a sacred duty, protecting the house from the sea and the strange things that might walk out of it.

***

For the first few months after I moved into Shorecliff House I did nothing but work. There was a lot to be done. That old house had been left uncared for over more generations than anyone could remember, unoccupied for so long that it had descended practically to the status of a ruin. The roof was unstable in places and leaking water, several of the windows were smashed or broken, there were floorboards rotten through, damp mould grew in furry, black streaks up many of the walls and a general air of neglect and decay filled every room in the place. All of this was much as I would have expected from a house left exposed to the elements in such an unforgiving location as Shorecliff could be at times. The strong wind, the corrosive salt air; in a place such as this any un-maintained building would quickly be reduced to its constituent pieces.

In certain rooms, however, the damage seemed to go a little beyond that which would be expected from mundane, natural causes. In the drawing room, the dining room and the ground floor study, for instance, there were areas of broken wall and torn floorboard for which it was difficult to find a simple cause or explanation. In these places, corners of the room had been pulled to pieces, leaving great, gaping holes leading into the cellars below, each opening surrounded by deep scores and scratches and splinters of half-rotten wood. Marked deep into the floorboards and walls of each of these three places were large patches of a peculiar colour; deep stains, richer and more permanent than water but of some other liquid, it seemed, that had been spilled and thrown around the house at some point in its long period of isolation.

To a more imaginative man than I, these scratches and stains may have seemed evocative, not to mention disturbing. I can see that now. They might have suggested a history to the house, a place scarred by accidents or arguments long since over but which the house still remembered well. Looking back I can see that these were signs a more sensitive man, a man more aware of his surroundings might have understood. It is to my discredit that I must confess I was not that sort of man back then. When I first came across Shorecliff House I was too taken by the location and my own need for the seclusion and hard work it offered to notice anything unusual about the place. All I saw was a wreck of a house that needed someone to work on it. I saw a job I could lose myself in and I got on with it.

After six months the place was practically unrecognisable. The roof was fixed, the windows secured, the walls outside freshly whitewashed. Inside, the floors were re-laid and polished, new plasterwork set on the walls and ceilings, the kitchen and bathrooms all completely gutted and replaced until all the years of rot and decay that marked the house on my arrival had been cut out and tossed aside. For six months I worked hard on the place, cleaning and restoring wherever possible, tearing out and replacing wherever the damage was too severe. For six months I spoke to not a soul other than the suppliers and tradesmen I relied upon to help me with my work. For all that time I truly immersed myself in the task I had set, working late at night until the light or my own drooping eyes failed me, getting up early the next morning to start again. Every last minute that was available to me I worked on repairing that old house, my every thought focused on getting the job done, every drop of sweat devoted to doing it just exactly the right way. For six months I did not allow myself to think of anything not related to the job in hand. I forgot my old life completely. It meant nothing to me anymore; less than a dream even, my old friends and family no more substantial than ghosts. To even imagine a world outside Shorecliff, a life without the wood and nails and plaster and bricks with which the house was being rebuilt, seemed absurd to me then.

I know how this must make me sound – like a madman, a crazed idiot losing his mind in the middle of nowhere. It's a conclusion I find hard to argue with. I don't claim to have been entirely sane or rational during those six months. All I say is that my mind had become imbalanced and needed some time to right itself again. Those months I worked at Shorecliff, with Lovecraft my only friend and companion, my only link back to the world, provided that and I'll always be grateful to it, no matter how unsettling the days to follow would become.

***

It was early April when I first arrived at Shorecliff. There were new leaves on the row of birch trees which hid the house out of sight of the driveway that led up to it, and scattered tangles of late, wild daffodils grew across the large front lawn. By the time October came around, and those trees were growing bare again, virtually all of the work I had to do on the house was complete and I began to find myself with a few spare hours on my hands. One or two months earlier this might have caused me some difficulty, but by now I realised I was growing ready for a break from the hard, arduous routine I'd set for myself. My mind was beginning to clear. The dark fog that had been clouding my thoughts when I left the city had lifted a little. Without quite realising I was doing it, I found myself relaxing, taking an interest in my surroundings again, paying attention to my appearance, to what I was eating, showing more affection, even, to poor old Lovecraft (when he would allow it). I'd come to Shorecliff in the hope that hard work and isolation would cure me of the sick despair I'd fallen into during my earlier life. During those wet, cold October weeks, I began to feel as though my experiment was proving a success. My spirits so lifted I pledged to venture out of the house a little more, to explore and properly appreciate this odd place I'd settled into.

Shorecliff House itself was an unremarkable building. Constructed of the same light grey granite with which many of the region's houses were built, its design was simple and utilitarian, it's gardens set to a plain, open lawn which stretched from the face of the house to the very edge of the black cliffs which tumbled down to the North Sea below. It was located at the end of a long, private driveway running for miles along the coastline, far, far away from any main roads or thoroughfares. Nobody else lived along this road. Nobody else ever used it. There was no reason to. The road didn't lead anywhere other than Shorecliff and for years nobody other me had had any reason to go there. All this had made the place an odd corner of the country, an ignored peninsula, unvisited and unwatched for decades. Its isolation was complete and utter.

Only now, when I was slowly growing more aware of things around me did I really begin to perceive the full extent of just how remote the region was, how removed from the rest of the country this corner had become. I remembered the odd looks on the faces of the workmen I hired when they made their way out there, the confused conversations I had with suppliers when I tried to explain where I wanted their deliveries made. For the first time I began to feel a strange, unhealthy edge to this isolation, far removed from the comfort it had provided when I first arrived.

There was a path I would often follow which led from the edge of the garden lawn, down the face of the cliffs via a steep and twisting walkway to the beach below. Standing on the shore at the foot of this path, I marvelled at the sight of the giant, black cliffs rising over me, their faces dark and impassive, permanently glistening wet with spray from the sea and the waters that leached from the great moors above. For months I had been strangely reassured by this sight, pleased by the thought of the house I was restoring being built on top of such a massive, ancient structure. Now, however, the same view began to bring forth a very different response. Though not wishing to, it was as though my mind's attitude to Shorecliff and its environment was turning. Where previously I had felt at home and safe in its bleak, darkness, now I perceived something purposeful and malevolent in those very same characteristics. Far from being solid and reassuring, I saw in the face of those black cliffs an unpleasant watchfulness. Somewhere in the angles and curves made by the rocks emerged an unhappy coincidence of shadow and shape, a chance meeting of stone against sky that suggested an old intelligence staring back at me. The cliffs leaned back against the sky in a great, craggy V-shape whose apex pointed directly towards Shorecliff House. They bared their teeth and reared their head in a gesture of arrogant glee. This is not a place to be lived in, they seemed to say. This is not a place for people, or for life.

I tried to tell myself this was nothing but imagination playing tricks on me, the effect of too long spent in isolation. I tried to shrug it off, saying that it was my mind working to fill in the gaps left by the loss of normal social interaction, but I couldn't convince myself. The feeling of something evil and inhuman lurking in those cliffs and the surroundings of the house was too strong to set aside so easily. Just as I was recovering from the long depression that had brought me to Shorecliff and beginning to open my eyes again to the world around me, so I seemed to find myself in surroundings just as dark and unforgiving as my illness had been. It was as though the bleakness of my mood when I left the city had reached out and found a landscape to match it perfectly, a place that promised to be yet more difficult to escape from than I could imagine.

***

As autumn progressed, the trees around Shorecliff shed all their leaves across the great front lawn and the heathery moors behind the house bloomed to the deep red colour of rust and old blood. The skies settled into a pattern of permanently shifting shapes of black and grey and a season of cold mists enveloped the whole region. Rolling in from the sea, these mists were so close and so thick that it became impossible to venture far from the house for fear of missing the cliff edges and plunging to a messy end. This closeness emphasised yet further the eerie isolation of the house. It was at times as though we were floating in space, Lovecraft and I, in our odd granite box completely separate from the rest of the world.

Such conditions only helped further my speculations and anxieties about the real nature of my surroundings here. The sound of waves crashing onto the rocks below the house seemed to echo everywhere so that it was virtually impossible to tell which direction was which, as though the mist itself were carrying the sound around us, mocking and playing with us all the time. Mixed in with the waves were other sounds, strange cries, not of birds exactly nor of human voices, which swirled around us rising in intensity during the day before reaching a grim peak just as darkness began to fall. During such times, I began to understand the madness of becalmed sea adventurers with their dreams of sirens and mermaids and wondered in dour fascination what black rocks these voices were trying to entice me onto.

It was a season of storms too. That November the winds rose and blew storm front after storm front in from the North East. They were cold winds, with a touch of winter in them that bit through layers of clothing and made an ordeal out of even the shortest trip outside. Each day brought a new set of squalls and gales to batter the house, pinning Lovecraft and I inside our refuge and testing the security of the work I'd only recently completed on the roof and the windows. Throughout each storm, Lovecraft would stick diligently to his window ledge patrol, pacing back and forth for hours at a time, barely stopping to rest, all the while flinching at each new lift in the intensity of the wind outside. Only when the weather broke and the rain subsided would he leap down from his perch and run to the front door to be let outside. Standing at the doorway, I would watch him as he hesitantly stepped out onto the lawn, sniffing the air carefully and scanning the horizon for some sight of whatever the thing was he was afraid of. It was a remarkable performance and remarkably consistent each time. So much so that it was impossible to think of it as a mere act of instinct or habit. So particular and careful was Lovecraft in this routine that I became convinced there was some intelligence at work in the creature, some reasoning behind his strange actions that I should be able to understand if only I paid close enough attention. This was a disconcerting thought in itself and not one I cared to linger on more deeply than I could avoid.

Still the storms kept coming; day after day of them, rising in force each time, or so it seemed. Tiles began to be ripped from the roof of the house and I spent a hair raising couple of hours on a ladder trying to secure the guttering at one side of the building where it was threatening to come away from its binding. The old barn, which sat in the grounds to the rear of the main house and which I'd never bothered to properly restore, finally gave out and was reduced part way to rubble during a particularly vicious night's gale.

How long this went on for, I truly cannot say. Looking back now it seems like weeks, months perhaps went by with storms and winds attacking our stretch of coastline every day and every night. It feels like a long stretch of time ripped out of contact with the rest of the world, of wild, dark days and furious nights, of the sky itself extending its claws into Shorecliff House and shaking it to see how much we could stand. I know this can't be true. I know it can't possibly have gone on for as long as I remember it, that's just not the way the world works. It is the way it seemed to me at the time, though, and it is how I remember those days. A long test, an examination of endurance, an extended, dark night it felt we might never emerge from in safety.

The more time that passes between now and then – and it has been many years now since the events I am describing here took place – the more dreamlike those days seem to me. I passed the whole time in a vague haze of unreality. I remember very little clearly now, beyond the roar of the wind and the clatter of the rain upon our windows – for these were the soundtrack to the lives we led, Lovecraft and I. Most of all, I remember the ever intensifying mood of anxiety that built within the house. As the days passed, so Lovecraft's fits of nervous anticipation slowly infected themselves into me, like a virus insinuating itself in my blood and bringing me gradually to fever point. It was impossible not to become so affected, given the conditions we were living in and the curious obsessions of my companion. I became convinced myself that there was some cruel force lurking in the darkness outside the house, something living in the cliffs that was waiting for us, hunting us down. What this creature might be, I had no idea, but still I was overcome by dread for what was to come, what inevitably would happen when the storm finally tore through our defences and left us helplessly at the mercy of our unseen oppressor.

Somewhere during this strange period of feverish anxiety, I was plagued by a series of odd visions which came to me unbidden during my waking hours, but which seemed to be snatches of memories lifted from the long, restless nights I had just spent. Lovecraft and I were sleeping so little at that point that it is impossible for me to accurately distinguish between my real memories and whichever of the bizarre images I saw were merely dreams brought on by the over-agitated state I'd worked myself into. I remember the sight of Lovecraft, his eyes popping forward out of his head, his claws scratching at the window in a frantic fit of pure terror. I remember strange, dark shapes moving outside the house, almost impossible to see clearly so obscured were they by the sheets of rain which streaked our windows. I remember odd noises, as if of a giant, wet object slithering its heavy mass across our rain sodden turf; a powerful stench of putrefying fish and seaweed filling the house and choking our lungs. Most of all, I remember a flash of moonlight breaking through the clouds and illuminating for a second, just for a second, a giant, bloodshot eyeball, impossibly huge, staring at us in hunger and in fury.

I know these things cannot be. I know it and still I cannot shake them off. Even now, many years later, they stay with me, these images, a reminder either of the weird places my mind had fallen into at that time, or of the lucky escape I had from a terrible end to my story.

***

Heavy though the toll of these dark days was on me, they pressed yet more harshly upon Lovecraft. As the storms continued and his agitation grew, so he seemed to be steadily withering under the challenge of keeping up his obscure vigil. He grew increasingly drawn in the face, his usually sharp, intelligent eyes becoming dim and grey. Even though the temperature in the house was dropping by the day, his coat was moulting from him, leaving great clumps of hair behind him wherever he sat. All that time it seemed that he was steadily, gradually shrinking from within. At first I put it down to the traumas of the conditions we were living under, to his increasing asceticism and continued refusal of food and drink. Eventually, however, on a particular day when his movements were slow and painful and his spirit seemed to dip alarmingly, it became clear there was more to it than that, that there was a sickness inside him, eating away at him from the inside and that this was the true cause of his deterioration.

I didn't know quite what to do with this knowledge. My friend was ill and fading away before my eyes and there was nothing I could do about it. We two were trapped together inside the prison that Shorecliff had become for us, pinned in the house by the fierce gale raging outside. Even if we had wanted to leave, to flee to a nearby town to find a vet for Lovecraft and a safe place to recover, we couldn't have. The road into Shorecliff was flooded and impassable by car and the telephone lines into the house had been blown down days ago. There was nothing to do in the face of this conundrum but sit and wait for the weather to break again, to hope that the storms would pass and that Lovecraft's ailments would pass with them.

Except the storms showed no signs of lifting. If anything they grew in ferocity, reaching new heights of rage and violence. That night brought in a new hurricane yet more vicious than any we had experienced to date. The air around Shorecliff boiled furiously, large pieces of debris were torn from the fields around us and hurtled through the sky, tumbling into and colliding with the house. Eventually our defences could no longer hold out against this onslaught and I awoke from a fitful sleep to a great crash as one of the giant birch trees that lined the garden was pulled from its mooring and came ripping down through our roof and windows.

It was a terrible blow. The entire upper half of the building that I'd worked so hard to restore through all those months was at one single stroke reduced right back to the pile of uninhabitable rubble it had been in when I'd first arrived. Worse than that, the tree had fallen through the roof right on top of my own bedroom, the place where I slept and kept all my most treasured belongings. The last keepsakes from my pre-Shorecliff existence that I'd never had the strength to part with had been stored safely in those rooms and were now being blown clear across the North Sea and out of sight. Those cruel winds had opened up our house almost as easily as if it were a paper box. Looking at the gaping hole they'd ripped in our home it felt as though they'd torn just such a hole in me too. It was only by sheer chance that I myself was not killed stone dead during that crash. Ever since the escalation of Lovecraft's illness, I had abandoned that room as a sleeping quarter and taken to spending the nights down in the drawing room along with my eccentric little cat who refused, weak and ailing though he was, to move away from his guard duties at the window. Even in the depths of his infirmity, it seemed, Lovecraft was destined to protect me from danger.

This turn of events seemed to hit Lovecraft particularly hard again. When I returned to the drawing room after assessing the damage upstairs he had, for the first time in days, stopped his pacing patrol and was instead curled up in a tight ball, his back to the room, his nose pressed against the window pane. When I approached and he turned to look at me there was an air of defeat about him, as though now that the walls of our shelter had been breached, whatever plan it was he'd been working to had failed and all was lost. He seemed suddenly more withered and tiny than ever, his breathing laboured and his movements uncertain. At that moment I knew that which I had not allowed myself to recognise up till then, that my friend was losing his battle against the sickness inside him and that it was very likely he might not see out this night.

It was a little after midnight when the tree came down through our roof and I pledged then to stay close to Lovecraft for the rest of the night, to watch over him just as he had seemed to watch over me all these months and to do whatever I could to ease his discomfort. I brought him blankets to keep him warm, more food and fresh water, all of which he accepted, willingly and uncharacteristically, as far as he could.

We sat together, he and I, for hours that night with the storm raging outside, each moment hearing the sound of new crashing and tearing as the wind continued to dismantle the building around us. All that time I talked to him. I told him about the life I had before I came to Shorecliff. I told him about the house I'd lived in, the girl I'd loved and married and about the child we'd had together. I told him about the accident that had killed them both and taken them away from me forever and about how I'd never forgiven myself for not being able to prevent it. I told him all the reasons why I'd fled from the city and how I'd come to find refuge and solace and a new start to life here at Shorecliff with its ramshackle old house and its peculiar, so peculiar little cat. Throughout all of this he stared up at me, his eyes, old and grey though they looked now, still retaining that spark of intelligence, that beseeching quality that had marked him out from the very beginning. Even now, towards the very end of his life I was sure he was trying to tell me something, trying to get some message through to me, something I needed to know but never would, something he understood about the world that no-one else would ever now know about.

I wanted to stay with him all night. I promised I'd stay all night to talk to him and comfort him, but in the end, I couldn't. At some point during that long, strange night my body gave out on me and despite the storm raging around us and despite all my promises, I somehow fell asleep. It was a ridiculous and a selfish thing to do and I don't think I will ever forgive myself for it, but it was not a thing I had any control over. I'd slept so little over the week leading up to that night that at some point it was bound to happen. My eyes drooped, my defences broke and I fell, tumbling, into a deep, sound and restful sleep.

That night I had a series of wild and vivid dreams. I dreamt images of a clarity and reality far greater than any I'd ever seen before or have seen since. I dreamt I saw Lovecraft - not the withered, sick creature he was now, but strong and agile again – creeping stealthily out onto the great lawn in front of the house. Hunched in a hunting pose, he stepped cautiously forward, as if stalking some prey, ready to make his strike.

I dreamt I saw a giant wave, far taller and more powerful than any that had previously hit this coast, crash up against the cliffs. I saw sea water engulf the entire house, washing us all away to sea with it. I saw myself tumbling in the surf, gasping for breath. I saw Lovecraft alongside me, furiously grasping for a safe hold on the shore.

I dreamt I saw Lovecraft out on the lawn again, his fur scarred and scratched as if he'd been in a vicious fight, hissing and spitting ferociously at some creature that shifted about in the darkness, almost imperceptible, just out of sight at the edge of my vision.

Finally, I dreamt I saw Lovecraft staring back at the house, drenched to the skin by the heavy rain that continued to fall. It was daylight now and he seemed to be telling me not to follow him, not to come after him, his large, bright eyes somehow transmitting their warning to me before he turned and walked slowly away from the house and towards the cliffs.

***

When I awoke the next morning, bright sunlight was pouring through the drawing room window and Lovecraft was nowhere to be found. I have no idea where he went or how he got out. The doors of the room were closed, the windows locked and the fireplace had been blocked up to prevent the wind from coming down it. It is not impossible that he managed to force the drawing room door open and that it blew closed again after him, but even then I cannot explain where he went to after that. All doors and windows to the outside were closed and bolted and secured tight to protect us from the storms. I scoured the house looking for him. I searched through every cupboard, every possible corner or hiding place he might have crawled into, but there was no sign of him anywhere. I even crawled, precariously up through the rubble that was the upper floor of the house, but to no avail. Lovecraft was gone. Just as quietly and mysteriously as he had arrived in my life all those months ago, so now he had vanished, as completely and absolutely as a dream upon waking or a bubble bursting.

So involved was I in my search for Lovecraft that I did not for some time even notice the second strange fact of that strange morning. The storm had broken. The winds had died. For the first time in as long as I could remember the sun shone brightly, blue skies breaking in great patches between the high, white clouds. I stumbled quickly down the stairs, threw open the front door and ran out onto the lawn. It was like stepping into a new world. The air was fresh and still, the view clear and perfect. The wreckage and debris caused by the storms of the previous days were scattered all around me, but somehow that didn't matter. The gales had come and thrown their worst at me, but somehow I had survived it. Even in the midst of my grief at losing Lovecraft, the relief was exhilarating and overwhelming – here was the bright new dawn I thought I might never see again.

Mixed in with that moment of elation, however, was the knowledge that it could not last. The dark danger that lurked in these cliffs would not be put down for long. Even then, in the middle of that bright morning glow, I could see new storm clouds gathering, black and threatening, out at sea to the North East. Shorecliff would not let me go without a fight, I was sure, and who could say that the worst was not still yet to come.

This is my chance, I thought. This is the opportunity that Lovecraft, somehow, has opened up for me. This is my chance to escape the fate that Shorecliff has in store for me. Everyone has these chances, these moments to decide, in a split second, what shape of the next part of their story will take. The difficult thing is to recognise them. The difficult thing is to take them.

I took mine. I owed it to Lovecraft to do that much. Do not follow me, he had told me in my dreams the previous night. I returned to the house and packed a bag full of whatever belongings I had left that I could carry. I walked out of Shorecliff House that very morning and I have never returned.

# The Impossible City

So long as he sleeps, he feels safe. He dreams of nothing. Nothing, at least, that he can recall afterwards. When eventually he wakes, it will be with a wrench so painful, to a world so loud and bright that he will gasp at the shock of it. When he wakes, it will be to a place so confused and delirious as to be indistinguishable from a dream. The city rolls out before him, bizarre and disorienting. Nothing he sees there will make any sense to him. It is a place straight out of a nightmare or a horror story. A place without logic or reason that defies his senses and leaves his head spinning. A bewildering place, indeed.

Everyone who comes to the city arrives innocent and blameless, they say. They don't stay that way for long. And nobody the city has use for ever leaves, so they say. Such are the stories told about the city by the people who know of it and study it. It is a place of rumour and myth, only half believed in even by the few who have heard of it and never forgotten by anyone who has ever seen it, no matter how hard they might wish to.

A shadow hangs over this region. A dark fog that infects the soul of every living creature it touches. They cannot see it, but they can feel it. It covers their hands and lives inside their lungs, pushing and leading them for every step they take. It has a plan for every one of them. Everyone who comes to the city has a role to play in the story it is spinning and whether they realise it or not, whether they wish to follow or not, makes no difference whatsoever.

***

He woke up on a bus travelling through a city at night. It was dark outside and raining heavily. Through raindrops on the window, the orange glare of streetlights glittered and swam across his vision like silent fireworks, or streaks of paint thrown at a canvas. He'd been

asleep for a long time, or so it seemed to him. His muscles ached from being stuck in the same position for too long, his head throbbed, his lips were dry and swollen.

The very process of waking was slow and painful and at the end of it he found himself in a place he did not recognise. He had no idea where he was, no idea how he had got there or what he was doing. For a long while he sat blinking and yawning, his vision blurred and unfocused, his mind a blank. He wiped his mouth, rubbed his hands vigorously over his eyes and cheeks and tried hard to work himself into wakefulness, to sharpen his senses enough that he could begin to take stock of his surroundings.

Inside the bus, it was warm and stuffy. The cabin was full, the radiators blowing out hot air and moist heat rose from the breath and clothing of the passengers all around him. A constant buzz of noise swirled through the air – the growl of hard-working engines, people chattering and laughing loudly, high pitched, excited voices calling to each other from one end of the bus to the other. There was a strange charge of anticipation in the air. Even without understanding what was happening, he could feel it. It was unmistakable.

'What an odd thing,' he said to himself. 'To wake up in a strange place and not know why.' He tried hard to think of the last thing he could remember, but nothing came. 'My name is Solomon,' he thought. 'I know this. I remember being called to and I remember replying. But who was doing the calling? And where? I just don't know.'

To begin with, he remained calm. The situation he found himself in seemed bizarre and ridiculous and his first reaction was to laugh it all off as too unbelievable to take seriously. 'Something will turn up', he assured himself. 'This confusion will pass soon enough. I'll figure out what's going on and chuckle at myself for being so foolish.'

He turned his head to glance at the passengers around him. On the seat next to him sat an old man. A tall, grey-haired gentleman in a long, heavy overcoat, which bunched up on the seat between them, and pushed uncomfortably into Solomon's thigh. He shifted awkwardly in his seat for a moment, trying to find a space in which to position himself and in doing so noticed, for the first time, the rucksack and plastic carrier bags which were bundled on his lap and on the floor around his feet. He opened each of the bags quickly in turn and found all of them to be packed full of books, too many to count in the cramped circumstances he found them in. Paperbacks, hardbacks, oversized folio prints and small, flexible journals; they were all stuffed in beside one another, cramming every spare inch of room available in each bag. He pulled a few volumes out, but they meant nothing to him, their subjects too obscure and esoteric for him to make any sense of – the memoirs of a rural priest, an ancient volume of court records from a parish he'd never heard of, a study of planning regulations pertaining to the development of land owned by the military. He flicked quickly through each one with a raised eyebrow and a confused shake of the head before placing them back inside the bags they came from.

Time passed and still he became no clearer as to what was happening. He stretched out a hand to wipe the window clear of condensation to try and see where he was going, which part of the city the bus was headed towards, but he couldn't make anything out. None of the streets they were passing through seemed familiar to him. Or rather, there were places he seemed to know and recognise - a church spire or a shop front, a statue or a municipal building - but whose appearance had been altered in some way or whose position seemed oddly out of place. Staring through the rain and condensation streaked window, he concentrated hard on these half-familiar landmarks, as if by sheer effort of will he could force the day to revert to something approaching normality, but nothing about the city seemed to make any sense whatsoever. It was as though the buildings they were passing simply did not belong side by side in the streets as they seemed to be here, as though they had been transported in randomly from entirely different parts of the town or from another city altogether. The whole effect was peculiarly dreamlike and unsettling and added strongly to the atmosphere of unreality he was travelling in.

Yet more strange than the buildings were the crowds of people who milled about in the road outside. Despite the rain and despite the lateness of the hour, the streets were thick with men and women shouting and hurrying along, all moving quickly in the same direction, spilling from the pavements onto the road, filling the spaces between the traffic all of which, again, seemed to be moving steadily together towards the same destination. There was a festive atmosphere among them, an almost tangible sense of excitement that carried through from the people inside the bus to the vast crowds who walked past outside.

The more closely he observed the crowds, the less comfortable Solomon began to feel. Something about the expressions on the faces of the people in the bus beside him he found quietly disconcerting – the way they seemed, in some way he could not quite put his finger on, to be not entirely awake to themselves, the way they giggled and chattered, but without ever seeming to make eye contact or properly notice each other's presence. There was something feverish and irrational about the way they behaved that left Solomon with a cold, uncomfortable feeling that built upwards from his stomach. Wherever these people were going, whatever it was they were doing, he felt quite sure he would rather not be involved.

He peered around the crowd, trying to figure out the best way to get out, how best to get to the driver and persuade him to stop the bus. As he did so, his eyes caught those of the passenger sitting beside him.

The old man sat with his head turned towards Solomon, his eyebrows raised, his lips curled in quiet amusement. Solomon started on seeing him. His skin crept and his muscles tensed. All of a sudden he felt exposed, as though caught in the act of committing some forbidden crime.

The old man chuckled at his reaction. "No need to look so anxious," he said, giving a reassuring nod and a smile. "Don't worry, we're almost there."

Solomon nodded and smiled in return, but continued to look around him. He gathered his bags together and tried to stand, but the jolting movements of the bus and the press of the crowd around them pushed him back to his seat.

"You know," the old man continued, "I don't think I recognise your face. Have you been with us for long?"

Solomon didn't know quite how to answer this. "I...don't think so," he said, laughing nervously at his own uncertainty. "You must forgive me. I'm finding this all a little disorienting." He waved a hand in gesture at the people in the bus, the crowds outside.

The old man laughed brightly. "I know what you mean," he said. "I can hardly believe it myself. I've been waiting for this day for so long. It doesn't seem possible that it's actually happening."

He turned in his seat a little to face towards Solomon. "Ever since I was a small boy," he continued, "as far back as I can remember they've been talking about this day. I didn't really think I'd ever live to see it. My Father didn't – and he was the most devout, the most committed man you could ever hope to meet. My Mother didn't, God rest her soul. Why would I expect to? Why would you?"

"And yet," he smiled broadly, raising his arms to indicate all the people around them. "Here we all are. We are the lucky ones. We get to see it happen."

Solomon nodded again and forced another smile. Just as with the buildings outside, there was something about the old man that seemed familiar, but nothing he could place precisely. The pitch to his voice, the strange charisma in the way he spoke, all of these things triggered a memory locked somewhere in the back of Solomon's mind, something that warned him to beware, to tread carefully.

"You're nervous," the old man went on, placing a hand gently on Solomon's arm. "I can understand that. You're still a young man; you'll be full of questions, full of uncertainty. There's nothing wrong with that. I was the same way at your age. Take it from me, though - what's happening here today is going to make everything better again. Everything that's turned this city into the desperate mess it has become these past few years, all of that will be washed away.

"He's here. Just as he said he would be. Just as they always told me he would be. He has a plan for all of us and today is the day we find it out. This is the day that will make sense of it all."

His words came soft and calm. Unlike the others on the bus, whose excitement seemed fanatical and unreasoned, the old man had an air of tranquillity about him. His eyes were bright, to be sure, but with an excitement borne of anticipation, of the knowledge that a long awaited prize was finally ready to be won. Despite his wariness, Solomon began to feel that this was a man he could talk to. The only person on the bus, perhaps, who would know what was happening and could explain it all to him.

He gathered up his courage and leaned forward to speak quietly in the old man's ear. "Can you help me, please?" He whispered. "I don't know where I am. I woke up here a few minutes ago, but I don't know how I got here or what I'm supposed to be doing. This place is so strange. It's familiar to me, but I don't think I've ever been here before. Is there somewhere I can get off so that I can find my way home?"

The old man frowned upon hearing this and looked Solomon up and down. He was serious now and thoughtful and a series of confused expressions passed over his face.

"You've never been here before, you say?" He whispered back, leaning conspiratorially in towards Solomon, as though keen that no one else should overhear.

"No."

"And you don't recognise me or any of these people around us?"

Solomon shook his head.

This seemed to cause some consternation in the old man and he rested back in his seat, staring straight ahead of him his lips pursed in thought. He turned his head back to Solomon again and took a deep breath before laughing gently and relaxing again.

"I wouldn't worry, if I were you," he said. "It'll all make sense soon, I'm sure of it. Just stay close to me. Trust in the city. It'll all be ok, I promise."

As he spoke a commotion broke out in the bus. All around them people rose from their seats and gathered towards the front of the carriage. Outside a cheer arose among the crowds filling the streets and over on the horizon in the distance ahead of them a great light began to shine, a warm glow that shone through the rain-spattered windows and reflected strangely off the dark clouds that hung overhead. The source or meaning of this light wasn't clear to Solomon, but it seemed of great significance to the others in the bus and the hundreds clamouring outside.

"It's now!" He heard a voice cry. "It's happening!"

Other voices rose in agreement and the crush of passengers began to move towards the exits of the bus which had, by now, ground to a sudden halt. Solomon remained in his seat, not quite sure what to do, not wanting to miss the chance of talking with the old man but neither wanting to become too caught up in whatever was happening.

Without saying a word, the old man stood and left purposefully with the rest of the crowd and before Solomon could decide what to do next, he felt a tug on his collar as another passenger pulled him from his seat. "Come on, my friend", a voice said. "Now's no time to hang around!" Solomon stumbled behind him, only just managing to keep his feet as he struggled to hold a firm grasp on the rucksack and bags of books he was burdened with and which, for some reason, he seemed reluctant to part with.

Outside in the streets the crowds pressed forward ever more quickly. Stepping out from the bus, Solomon found himself immediately caught up in the flow of bodies. There was no room for independent thought or movement anymore. Even if he had wanted to it would have been impossible for him to move off in any direction other than that one set by the rest of the pushing, heaving crowd.

Overhead the lights on the horizon continued to flicker and flash, casting weird shadows across the tops of the buildings that lined the city streets they were walking along, each new peak of intensity bringing gasps and cheers from the crowd around him.

Up ahead, Solomon could see the old man from the bus, but it was hopeless to think he'd ever be able to catch up with him. Slowed down, as he was, by the rucksack and the bags of books he clung to in each hand, Solomon was unable to quite keep pace with the others around him and the white head of the old man seemed to creep further away into the distance with every step.

Struggling to keep his feet amidst the bumping and pushing of the crowd, Solomon suddenly felt a rise of panic swell in his chest and a prickle of tears begin around his eyes. Very quickly he felt a powerful need to free himself from this crowd, to find a place to cool his head and gather his emotions. "Please," he shouted. "I need to stop! Can you let me stop, please?" He tried to push himself against the flow, to move towards the buildings at the side of the pavement, but as he did so he stumbled and fell to the ground. Nobody stopped to help him. Shoved and kicked by the people rushing past him, he crawled and dragged his way to a clear space in an empty doorway sheltered from the passing crowds. So protected, he pulled his coat around him and gathered his bags together. He rested his head down on the cold, stone steps of the doorway and, overcome by weariness and hurting from the kicks and blows he'd received on the way there, he passed out into unconsciousness.

***

Sinking down into black, empty space, he drifts. His mind returns to a dreamless blank, a clear slate with no thoughts, no anxieties. The space stretches all around him, infinite in every direction, bottomless and without limit. He stares into the void and feels it encircle him, free and without judgement. He feels its peace press into him.

After a time he becomes aware that he is not alone. Just for a moment, he feels a presence drift nearby, a warm insubstantial body that floats just as he does. Its warmth is alluring but brings no sense of comfort or reassurance. As it reaches out to pull him closer, Solomon recoils away from it, a spark of dread flying through him. He feels a smile spread across the creature, a sickening, gleeful grin of delight that fades back into the darkness as it drifts slowly away.

"Not now," he hears a low voice whisper, "but soon. Soon."

***

When he awoke again, the city streets were empty. The crowds had passed and there was nobody left as far as he could see. The rain was coming down heavier than before and rivers of water poured from the guttering making the steps he was lying on run slick and wet and soaking him right through to the skin. Over in the distance the weird light that had so excited and moved the crowd continued to flash its eerie spell over the clouds and rooftops and through the din of the rain he could hear the sound of chanting voices carry on the wind from somewhere not far off.

Gingerly climbing to his feet, Solomon began to shiver from the cold and pulled his sodden coat around him to try and stop the rain from running down his neck. "This will not do," he said to himself. "I'll catch my death if I don't get out of this rain."

For want of a better plan he turned and pushed against the wooden door he'd been sheltering in front of. To his surprise, it swung open easily and he stepped inside. Walking through a dusty, dark corridor for a few paces, he opened a second door, this time panelled with large panes of stained glass, and found himself, eventually, walking inside an enormous, imposing chamber.

A thick blue carpet covered the floor, great marble pillars stretched up to the ceiling at the centre of which a vast glass dome loomed over the entire space. The sheer size of the room took Solomon's breath away. It was a grand space, a fine, luxurious palace that, when first built, must have stood as a statement of wealth and power, an expression of great civic pride.

Not anymore, though. The glass dome was cracked and broken in many places so that the rain dripped and poured through, falling down onto the carpet below in loud, sodden splashes. The carpet itself was torn and threadbare in patches; the elaborate plasterwork that ringed the dome was crumbling and falling away; the marble pillars were covered in dust and a black, thick mould that grew from their bases in long, filthy fingers.

The centre of the room itself was filled with bookshelves. Freestanding rings of shelves ran in concentric circles following the curve of the dome above, each ring starting and finishing at a short walkway, which led from the centre of the room to a large desk over in the opposite corner from where Solomon now stood. Above this hung a sign which read 'Issue Desk'.

'It's a library,' thought Solomon. 'Or at least it was once.' Many of the shelves he could see had fallen or been pushed over, kicked and hammered until they toppled on top of one another, their contents spilled onto the floor. Pieces of broken shelves and chairs were scattered everywhere he looked, in amongst which were pile upon pile of torn, tattered books, each one ripped apart, their pages tossed aside, their spines left cracked and twisted on the floor.

Solomon walked carefully into the room, watching his step as he made his way through the wreckage all around him. The only light in the place came from the emergency lamps located above each of the exits, their orange, sodium bulbs casting a weird glow over the room through which Solomon had to peer to see where he was heading. At first glance, there were no signs of life at all in the place. The entire building felt as though it had long ago been left abandoned and unloved. Only once he reached the Issue Desk did he find evidence that any other soul had visited here at all recently.

Standing in front of the desk, Solomon raised his plastic bags of books and rested them down on its scratched, battered surface. Behind the desk he found an old oil lamp, still full of oil, and a box of matches. Striking a match, he lit the lamp and began to look around. There was a chair behind him and he settled himself into it, grateful for the opportunity to take the weight off his feet again. On the desk in front of him, he saw a pile of papers, several piles, neatly stacked and organised, each page covered, so far as he could see, with a tiny, handwritten script. Beside these, he found a chipped, china mug (not recently cleaned) and an aluminium thermos flask which, when he lifted it, he found to be half full and still warm.

Solomon put the flask back down and glanced warily around the room again. Whoever it was that used this place was probably not far away and, still bruised and beaten from his journey through the crowds, he was not keen to meet any more residents of this strange city he'd found himself in. Satisfying himself that the room was still empty, he leaned forward and began to examine the papers stacked so perfectly all along the desktop. There were at least seven piles, so far as he could see, each one containing several hundred pages, well over a thousand in total, and each one covered in the same, hard to decipher, handwriting. Whoever's work this was, it clearly represented a major undertaking, the task of a lifetime, perhaps. He lifted the pile furthest to his left and tried to read it. "The Impossible City: A history."" read the title page.

Solomon turned the page over and stared at the writing inside. As he did so, a loud bang echoed through the room. Over to his right he saw a door swinging closed. Standing in front of the door was a young man, no older than thirty, perhaps, though it was difficult to tell in a light this dim. He wore a crumpled old suit, torn around the shoulders and slick with rain. His hair was dark and unkempt, his cheeks covered with the unruly stubble of a good week's growth. He stood and glared at Solomon for a long moment, the anger and outrage which etched over his face slowly evaporating as his eyes rested on the bag of books which rested on top of the desk.

"You're late," he said.

Solomon's forehead creased with surprise. "Excuse me?"

"I said you're late," said the young man again. "I was expecting you days ago."

He stepped purposefully forward towards the desk, opened a bag of books and, without paying anymore heed to Solomon, began to empty them out across the wooden surface. Each book was examined quickly, an inquisitive eye ran over its spine and cover, before being placed in a row of neat, ordered piles.

"What kept you?" He murmured as he worked through the bags. "More trouble with the border guards?"

Solomon shuffled awkwardly in his seat. His eyes blinked, his mouth opening and closing as he searched for some way to make sense of this.

"I think perhaps you have me confused with someone else." He said eventually. "I don't think I'm supposed to be here at all. I was caught in the storm and..."

"You've brought my books, haven't you?" The young man interrupted sharply.

"Well...?"

"These are the books I requested from North Abbey two weeks ago. The books I was told would be delivered by Tuesday. Here we are on Friday and you have arrived with them. Ergo - you are late and I have been expecting you. I don't see where there is any room for confusion."

His tone was sharp and dismissive and he spoke quickly without at any point taking his eyes off the books he was inspecting and sorting through. Solomon sat in silence. He didn't know what to do or what to say. The whole situation was too bizarre for him to understand, just one more unexplainable event in a day that had been full of strange events. None of it made sense. He wracked his brain trying to remember something, trying to come up with any history for himself that would explain his arrival here, but nothing came. Even now, after everything he'd been through, still he could think of nothing. Tiredness washed over him. Here in the shelter of the library he felt his eyes drooping again. His body ached, his arms felt heavy. For a moment he wondered whether he had been drugged and his skin prickled with panic at the thought. If that were true, it would mean somebody had planned all this, that he was acting on someone else's whims now, without knowing whether their intentions towards him were good or ill.

"Is this all of them?" The young man asked when he'd finished working through all the carrier bags on the desk. Solomon, still in a daze, shook his head and lifted up the rucksack that still sat on the floor at his feet.

"Good," said the young man and eagerly tore open the bag to pull out the last of the books. Once he was finished he took the aluminium flask and poured himself a measure of lukewarm coffee into the chipped, china mug on the desk. In between two of the books from the rucksack he found a letter which he ripped open and began to read while sipping absentmindedly at his coffee.

"You must be Solomon," he said after a moment.

"I am."

"It says here they have everything I requested except for the Christie and two of the Barker volumes. Have you any idea what happened to them?"

"I'm afraid I don't."

"I mean, are they in use somewhere? Are they lost? It's very important."

"I'm afraid I just don't know"

The young man sighed heavily and slumped down in a wooden chair. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and muttered something under his breath. After a few moments, he seemed to calm down and, lowering his eyes again, looked towards Solomon as if seeing him properly for the first time. As he did so, his features softened and a concerned expression spread over his face.

"Good God, man, you look terrible! Look at you, you're soaking wet, your hands are shaking. When was the last time you ate anything? Come with me. We can't have you sitting around here in the cold like this; you'll have a fever in no time. I have a fire in here. Let's get you warmed up."

He rose quickly from his seat and opened a door into an adjacent room, indicating for Solomon to follow him. As he rose, a trembling weakness overtook Solomon and he stumbled forward onto his knees. "Come on, old boy," whispered the young man, springing to help him back to his feet and slowly, carefully guiding him towards a chair.

The small room they settled into had the look of an office about it. There was a great mahogany desk over at one side of the room and long, wooden shelves lined the walls, each one filled with books and papers neatly filed into box folders. In recent times, the young man had obviously commandeered the space for living quarters of a sort. All the office furniture was crowded over towards one wall, the rest of the floor space being taken over by a small, foldaway mattress, a couple of wooden chairs and a tiny portable gas heater which the young man crouched down towards and struggled to light.

"Just wait here," he said as it eventually sparked into life and a warm glow began to spread into the room. "Take off those wet clothes. I'll be back in a moment." He left the room and returned after a few minutes, carrying with him a couple of blankets and towels which he proceeded to wrap around Solomon's by now half undressed and shivering form. This done, he turned his attention towards a camping stove which sat on the floor in front of the fire and busied himself by preparing water for coffee and a pot of soup using a packet of dry mix and water from one of several plastic bottles stored away under the desk.

Solomon watched him the whole time. Engaged in the task as he was, the young man's actions were focused and efficient. Gone was the gruff, businesslike manner he'd presented at first sight. Now, busy though he was, he made sure to look up every few moments to check on Solomon, to mutter a word or two of encouragement and to make sure his visitor was becoming more comfortable. Right away, even after so short a meeting, Solomon was struck by the young man's ability to immerse himself totally in whatever task was in front of him, to devote all his energies to doing the job as well as it could be done, without complaint and without fuss. Whether it was researching and writing the book Solomon had seen on the desk, preparing this safe haven inside the wreckage of the library, or looking after some poor stranger he'd stumbled across, this young man, it seemed, was capable of rising to meet any challenge.

After a while, the warmth of the fire and the soup worked its way into Solomon's bones and he began to feel a little more in control of himself. "Thank you," he said to the young man who, by now, was sitting on the floor in front of the fire patiently waiting for his visitor to recover. "Don't mention it," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Do you live here?" asked Solomon, casting a glance around the room.

"I guess I do. Nobody else seems to want the place, so I suppose its mine now, for what its worth. My name is Greer." He stretched out a hand which Solomon took and shook gently.

"I'm Solomon. But you knew that, already."

They sat in silence for a long while, listening to the hiss of the fire and the sound of the rain outside whipping violently against the windows.

"I saw your book," said Solomon. "Looks like quite an undertaking."

Greer laughed good-naturedly. "Isn't it just! 'The Impossible City' – A history of this strange town we find ourselves in. A full unexpurgated telling of the story of the city and the people who made it. A tale of a once great place now gone very bad. It is, as you say, quite an undertaking. A folly, even. A grand task that I'll probably never finish. And even if I do, what are the chances there'll be anyone around to read it? Pretty slim, I'd say. Pretty slim."

Solomon laughed with him. "Then why do it?"

"Why indeed?" Greer sighed and grimaced. "There isn't really an answer to that. You've got to spend your time doing something, I suppose."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

"Ah, now. That's a dangerous thing to say, Solomon. You're treading on shaky ground there. If I start talking about my book now, there's no telling when I'll stop. There's nothing authors like more than having a captive audience to talk at. I'm not even joking. When I get into the flow on this thing the time just flies past. Minutes, hours, days might go by before you have a chance to get a word in edgeways!"

Solomon laughed again. He felt warmed by the pleasure of Greer's company and the enthusiasm with which the young man spoke.

"In all truth," he said, "there's nothing I'd rather do than sit here and listen to you tell me about this place. I woke up a few hours ago on a bus surrounded by fanatics. I have no idea how I got there. You tell me I'm a delivery man here to bring you some books. Well, that may be true, but I have no memory of it, no idea where I came from or who I might be. Other than my name, I know nothing. Now I find myself in this place, this great library, so ruined and rundown I presumed it was abandoned. Except it isn't. In here I find you, squirreled away like some mountain survivalist working away on your history with books and papers piled up everywhere there's a spare inch. Honestly, I don't care how long it takes. If you can tell me anything about this place that will make any sense of what's happening to me, I'd be so grateful, more grateful than you can imagine."

Greer listened to this in silence, the expression on his face suddenly became grey and serious again. His shoulders dipped, his eyes turned to the floor and the bright demeanour he'd been working to uphold disappeared as though washed out of him by a cold injection of reality.

"Everyone who comes to the city arrives innocent and blameless," he said, his voice quiet and resigned. "You can't stay that way for long though. The city won't let you."

He raised his head again and looked Solomon directly in the eye. "You want to be careful, Solomon," he said. "It'll get you too eventually. Somehow, no matter what you do, it will get to you just like it gets to everyone."

He leaned forward and poured himself another cup of coffee, offering the pot out first to Solomon who shook his head in thanks.

"You want to know about the city? I don't know what I can tell you. I've been working on this thing for so long you'd have thought I'd know everything there is to say about the place, but I don't. There's too much that doesn't make sense. And that's the point. There is a story to tell about this city, but not one that anyone would believe, not one that makes any sense at all."

"This used to be an important place. You know the port, just a few miles from here? Ships used to come in from all over the world to drop off their goods to trade here. There was barely a place in the world where our influence didn't stretch. Our banks, our finance houses were the best, the most important in the world – not anymore. Our schools, our universities, the first and the best in every field. The greatest philosophers, scientists, doctors of their age all came here to study, to work and to teach – not anymore. Certainly not anymore."

"It sounds like a golden age, I know. I'm sure it didn't feel like it at the time, but it certainly seems like one now. Because now look at us. There is no law anymore, no order. You take your life in your hands just walking out in the street. You can't plan anything more than a week or so in advance. You don't know what policy is going to be changed at the last minute, what streets closed, what businesses burnt down, what group will be the next ones to be targeted. Instead of lawyers, we have militia. Instead of philosophers we have these insane cults of religious fantasists."

The words came out of him in a flood, a painful outpouring of despair at the state of the city around him. Solomon watched and listened as it came out, a creeping sense of anxiety tightening in his chest with every word.

"I think I've seen them," said Solomon when Greer had fallen silent again.

"Who do you mean?"

"The cultists. The religious fantasists. They were with me on the bus when I arrived here. They were out in the streets, hundreds of them, thousands even."

Greer gave a derisory laugh. "You had a lucky escape, then. They're the worst of all. The root of the whole collapse, I sometimes think. They're a peculiar lot. There's no theology behind them, so far as I can tell, just a jumble of old folk tales bunched together with a reactionary fear of whatever they don't understand, which is quite a lot.

"It's the same sort of irrationality that has infected everything around here. Logic just doesn't work here anymore. 'A' doesn't necessarily lead to 'B'. There are no rules you can understand or follow, just the teachings of whatever lunatic happens to be in favour this week.

"And yet..." his voice sank again and he put his head in his hands before continuing. "And yet, even in all the chaos, even in all this disarray there are times when I think I'm getting close to something. There are times I think I can almost make out the beginning of a pattern of some sort, some kind of reasoning behind it. A cipher that repeats. A code that could be cracked if only I knew how to look at it. It's as though, despite everything, maybe there is a plan, maybe there is a hand guiding it all."

He laughed and shook his head. "Honestly, I don't know what's more frightening – the idea that some dread force is out there ruling over the city, or the fact that sometimes I almost talk myself into believing it. I might as well go off and join the cultists myself! What were they doing out there this time, anyway?"

Solomon shrugged. "They seemed to be going somewhere. Something important was happening. Someone important. 'He's here,' they kept on saying. 'He's here.'"

"Brilliant!" Greer laughed again. "That one again! That's my favourite of them all. The 'Myth of the Messenger', they call it. It happens all the time. A basic Messiah cult, really. The great man will arrive (or woman, or child, or thing, I honestly don't know) and from within him will come the power which will cleanse the city of all its sin and decay and lead us all back to the promised land. Happens all the time. They whip themselves up into a frenzy, charge up to light their fires over on Temple Hill and wait for him (or her or it) to come and save them."

"And does he?"

"What do you think? Of course not. When he doesn't show, they all march back down into town and look for someone to blame. Sometimes it's us – who do you think did all the damage in the library? Sometimes the museum or the university or the other churches, it varies. Thanks for the warning. We should keep our eyes peeled later on."

"Is it safe enough? Shouldn't we go somewhere else?"

"No, no. Don't worry. We'll be ok. They're not interested in us at all. It's the symbol they're after – the library and its books and all the wicked, forbidden knowledge they represent."

Greer laughed and Solomon with him and they fell back into silence. It was late now and the rain had stopped falling, the fire beginning to splutter and gasp as its gas cylinder ran empty.

"We should get some sleep," said Greer at last. "We'll work something out in the morning about getting you home."

"Wherever that is."

"Listen. You're Solomon Kane. It says so in my letter from the Abbot. You work for North Abbey, doing what, I don't know, but it's something to work on. Somebody knows who you are and what you're doing here. We'll work it out in the morning, I promise."

The business-like Greer was back again, the one focussed on a problem and determined to solve it. For the first time that day, Solomon felt reassured. Greer would sort something out; there was no doubt about it.

They settled down to sleep. Solomon on the foldaway mattress ("I insist," Greer had said.), Greer curled in a ball on the floor under his coat and an old blanket.

Despite the weariness in his limbs and the aching in his head, Solomon found himself unable to sleep. His mind swam as he thought through everything that had happened to him that day, everything that Greer had told him about the city. He was desperate to sleep, hoping that by doing so he would wake up again refreshed and knowing what his purpose in coming here had been. At the same time, though, that very same thought filled him with dread. He could not shake the fear that whatever the truth was, he might well be better off not knowing it.

After an hour or so of lying in silence, a loud noise came from the main library room and Solomon started suddenly. As he sat up in the bed, he saw that Greer had already risen and was hurriedly putting his clothes back on. "I think they're here," he whispered, opening the door just a crack to peer into the library. "Good God, why is it always us?" He waved for Solomon to stay quiet but to get up and dressed.

"Be ready to run if we need to," he said. "they'll probably leave us alone, but you never know." his voice trailed off, anxiety creasing his brow as loud voices could be heard next door, along with the loud crashing that meant another stack of books had been torn to the ground, another pane smashed in the great dome.

"How long does this normally last?" whispered Solomon.

"No telling," Greer replied. "No rules, remember. Anything is possible."

They sat quietly in Greer's room, side by side on the small bed, neither one saying a word. The noises in the room next door grew louder and louder, the voices coming closer until, finally the door itself burst open and a group of young men tumbled into the room grabbing Greer and Solomon and pinning them to the wall.

"They're here!" one of them cried out, a blond haired figure who stood by the door. "We've found them!"

At this the clamour outside grew even louder as a cheer rang out among the crowd wrecking the library and more bodies pressed themselves into the small room.

"What do you want?" shouted Greer, struggling against the two men who were holding him down. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Shut him up," the blond haired man by the door muttered and an arm was pressed firmly into Greer's face. "The pastor is here."

A hush fell across the crowd and, after a few moments, the press of bodies in the room parted. Through the crowd walked the old man who had spoken to Solomon on the bus. He walked slowly and calmly, placing a hand of thanks on the shoulder of the young man at the door. As he came to Solomon, he stopped and stood in silence. All eyes in the room were fixed on the two of them. He indicated for the men holding Solomon to release their grip and rested his two hands gently on Solomon's shoulders.

"It is you," he said at last, his eyes glowing in wonder. "It's really you. I sat and I spoke with you and I didn't see it but, look, it's obvious now, isn't it?" He glanced around at the others in the room, all of whom murmured and nodded in agreement.

"Oh my God, Solomon!" cried Greer, his head breaking free from his assailant's grasp. "They think it's you! They think you're the Messenger!"

The old man's smile spread to a wide grin that parted his lips and showed his teeth. He nodded purposefully to the man on his left and turned to walk away. Solomon opened his mouth to speak, to ask what was happening, to plead for mercy, but had not the time to say a word. The blow struck him dully on the back of the head. Its force sank quick to his stomach, bent his knees and swallowed him whole into a darkness which no longer felt welcoming, no longer felt safe.

***

He is drifting again. But not alone this time, and not free. Around him, he feels long arms clinging, pressing and holding. Nails dig into his sides – not painful, but firm, allowing for no movement, no prospect of escape. The grinning thing floats with him, pinned to his back and inseparable. He can feel its breath on his face, its cold saliva on his cheek.

"You think this is a dream," it whispers, it's voice a low growl that vibrates upward from the creature's belly. "You think this is not happening, but you're wrong. It's time."

It says the words over and over, repeating them endlessly over and again, as though casting a spell or a twisted prayer, as though the words themselves will change the shape of the world. Solomon hears the words and knows what they mean. He hears them and he believes them.

***

Up on Temple Hill the crowds are still gathered and the fires still burn. Solomon comes to consciousness with his arms tied above his head and his legs locked in chains. He lies on a stone slab, naked from the waist up, wet and shivering with cold and shock. Eager faces loom over him, their eyes glittering in the flames that circle the hill. From the back of the crowd he hears a low chant, a strange song that rises over the heads of the people standing, in words that he can't quite make out but which sound out clearer and clearer as the singers move through the crowd. The ring of bodies around him parts and the singers step into the circle, at their head the old man they called 'the Pastor'.

His clothes have changed. He is wearing a long, red cloak with a hood that he pulls down from his face. It's the same man as before. He has the same kindly smile, the same wise, reasonable eyes, but there is something different about him now. There is a change in his movements, the way he holds himself, an eagerness in the way he approaches Solomon as though he's waited too long for this moment and is finding it difficult to contain himself. He stands in silence for a long time, though, staring and smiling and saying nothing. Solomon tries to speak, but is too tired, his head hurts too much and he cannot summon the energy to form any words or thoughts.

Eventually, in response to some signal Solomon cannot see, the old man nods his head and steps forward.

"It's time, Solomon," he says. He kneels down and leans over to whisper in Solomon's ear. "This is your purpose," he says. "This is what you came here looking for. You will make so many people happy today. I want you to know that."

The words are kind and soft-spoken but they don't reassure Solomon at all. He pulls at the ropes around his arms, arches his back and tries again to speak, to say some words that will put a stop to this.

The old man stands again, raises his right hand and calls out in a loud voice that carries over the hushed crowd that stands around them.

"The Messenger is here!" He cries. A great cheer rises up in response.

"From within him will come the strength to change the world."

Another cheer.

"From within him." The old man is whispering again. He leans across Solomon with a long, silver rapier held tight in both hands. The blade cuts into Solomon's chest and is pulled in one swift, clean stroke down to his stomach. Blood spills fast from the wound, pouring over the stone slab and running out onto the bare soil underneath. More cuts are made. More cuts and more blood that spills and pours. "From within him," whispers the old man over and over.

As the noise swirls around him, Solomon can feel a change happening. A plan is being brought to fruition, a purpose being fulfilled. A cold breath is blowing out from the wound in his chest. Whatever it touches, it changes. Somewhere close by he hears laughter.

#  Philippe and the Silver Flute

In the far northern-most reaches of the country in which I was born, there lies a small town of a few thousand souls. It is these days a rather unremarkable place, quiet and rundown with little sense of purpose about it and no obvious clues as to its long and fascinating past. It is a place whose fame is renowned far more in storybooks and in legends told of far off times than in the dry, fact-riddled ledgers of more recent days. There are many stories told about this town, more than enough to fill a hundred fairy tales, more than enough to keep a humble taleteller such as I busy for a hundred long evenings, a thousand even. I could tell about the dragons and wizards who visited this place and the grand adventures they had here, of kings and beautiful princesses, of times of great glory that touched this humble little town and of times of pestilence and hardship during which its citizens did not feel so lucky. Too many stories for one telling, that's for sure. So, I'll start with a simple tale. A love story in some ways, a horror story in others. A true story? Oh, certainly. All the stories I tell are true, you know that, or at least truthful. And you can't ask fairer than that of anyone, can you?

***

At the time this story begins, the town (which we will call 'Glenlaw', even though that is not its name) was famed throughout the region for the carefree prosperity and flawless virtue of its citizens. Unlike other nearby villages, who struggled, poverty stricken, through famine and drought year after year, Glenlaw's fields were full of crops and its markets overflowing with produce. Where the peoples of other towns suffered plagues and sickness, no such problems came to Glenlaw. For many years, this had been the case - this one blessed place growing and

prospering while all around it, fields withered and peasant people suffered at the hands of the cruel master that is the land in these parts. The reason for this blessing was simple. Almost all of its prosperity the town owed to one single enchantment, a magic spell cast years ago by a long forgotten wizard, which protected the town from all the witches and monsters and wolves who lurked in the surrounding woods and mountains. While other towns suffered the theft of their children, the burning of their fields and their homes, Glenlaw alone was immune to these terrors. For no matter how powerful the witch, no matter how strong the wolf, the spell that protected Glenlaw was such that none of these creatures could so much as cross the threshold to enter this burgh, never mind do anything that might imperil the people who lived there.

In this town lived a boy and a girl – Philippe and Ursula. Born on the same day in the same hour they had been best friends since the first moment they met. All through their childhood they had been practically inseparable, playing together from first light in the morning, to the last minutes of the day when their mothers' voices would call out to bring them home from the fields and meadows that were the playground of their untroubled youth. "Wherever Philippe goes," said the people of the town, "so goes Ursula." And "Wherever you see Ursula," the saying went, "Philippe will not be far behind." So was the pattern of their infancy and early years and when they grew older and their interests gradually turned to more, shall we say, mature pursuits, it was again together that they chose to make those final steps towards adulthood. For who would Philippe want to be with, if not Ursula? And who would Ursula want to spend her life with, if not Philippe?

Now, while we have rightly mentioned that Glenlaw was a prosperous town, that did not mean that everyone who lived in it was equally so wealthy as their neighbour. In fact, as in all places, there was a wide and unbreachable gap that stretched between the richest and the poorest of households and it so happened that Ursula's family was one of the most wealthy and Philippe's family one of the least. Of course, for all the time they were children growing up none of this mattered one bit – who cares for money when there are trees to climb and butterflies to chase and rivers in which to swim. The older they grew, however, the more conscious they each became of the different worlds into which they had been born. To Philippe in particular, who everyday suffered the taunts and jibes of his peers for the raggedy nature of his clothes and who felt shame every time he visited Ursula without the bouquets and gifts she should have expected from any other suitor; to Philippe the matter slowly became central to his entire being, so much so that he refused to marry Ursula until he had proved himself to her by earning a fortune of his own.

"I cannot bear it," he said to Ursula. "The way that people will think of you, should you marry me as a poor man. They will think the less of you for marrying a man who cannot afford to support you on his own; they will mock you for having such poor taste in companion. And me? How will they think of me, these rich families who surround us and who we will have to live among? They will hate me as an interloper, a thief who has done nothing to deserve the good fortune I have landed on. They will never take us seriously, Ursula. They will never see us for who we are. Not until I am a rich man in my own right; a man, at least, who can stand in front of your father and ask for your hand without worrying about the tears in my trousers and the state of my shoes."

So it was that Philippe set himself to work in the town, quickly becoming known as a young man of intelligence and good work ethic who could be trusted with any number of difficult tasks. Even with such a good reputation, however, no matter how hard he worked, the making of his fortune seemed to stretch further away each day. Lacking the connections and good opportunities of his former schoolmates – all of whom found easy jobs managing their family's estates or entering their father's firms – Philippe had to resort to the most degrading, least reputable and least rewarding occupations in order to make even the most basic of livings. In the mornings, he cleaned factory floors, polishing machinery and scraping flour from the floor of bakeries as giant ovens cooked the air around him. In the afternoons, he worked in kitchens, washing dishes and preparing feasts he would never share in, and in the evenings, he travelled around the inns and taverns of Glenlaw town, selling cheap jewellery to half-drunk peasants and field workers until tiredness overtook him or he was thrown out into the street. In this way did the early years of Philippe's adulthood pass - caught in a never-ending daily toil that weakened his spirit and corroded his soul while never seeming to bring him any closer to the dream of being able to marry Ursula and take her in his arms as a free man.

During this period, Philippe fell briefly, and unfortunately, under the influence of a trader named Murnock. A small, mean-spirited man with long fingernails, red hair and a fiery temper, Murnock was feared and mistrusted throughout the town, the sort of man about whom dark rumours were often whispered, though never openly and never in his presence. Philippe had been carrying out some small, unimportant jobs for this foul creature when, against his better judgement, he found himself in a bar in the man's company late one evening.

"I have a small job that may interest you," hissed Murnock in a whispery, insinuating voice that caused the hairs on Philippe's neck to curl in distaste. "A small job, but one who's rewards may be quite considerable."

"I don't think so, Mr Murnock," said Philippe. "My card is quite full at the moment already. I fear I shall not be able to take on any more work for several weeks now."

"Quite so, quite so. I understand. Only, hear me out for a moment, my boy. Allow me a moment's indulgence. I promise you will not regret it." Murnock shifted in his seat and leaned forward towards Philippe, his small, leathery hands rubbing over one another slowly as he spoke.

"As I hear it, you are a young man of considerable qualities and ambitions. You are not like these other brutes in here who work all day only for the brief pleasure of drinking away their earnings when evening comes around. You have a plan and a prize you are working towards. And what a prize! That fine girl who waits for you. Very admirable, my boy, very admirable. Only, I ask myself – 'how can a young man like Philippe ever hope to earn sufficient monies to buy his way into the life he wishes? By running errands? No. By selling trinkets on the street? Never!' My dear boy, the way you are going you could work until you were an old man like me and still never have the opportunity to wed that fine, soft young woman who waits for you – waits so patiently for you! – in that rich house by the riverside.

"It is difficult, I know. But it is true. And yet, there is this one job, this one small job you could do for me which, if successful, will in one swoop bring you all the riches you desire. You can have that girl, my boy. You can have her on your own terms, if you want it. What do you say?"

Philippe said nothing but without looking the old man in the eye, nodded his head slightly as though to bid him continue. A smile stretched across Murnock's face and he lowered his eyes in satisfaction, in much the same way he did on making a sale or on hearing of the death of a rival. He leaned in further again and lowered his voice to a more confidential, conspiring tone.

"I have a client. A foreign gentleman. A fine man of noble breeding. He lives, at present, on the far side of the mountains but has long cherished a desire to relocate himself here to this fine, upstanding burgh. Now, I, through certain connections and relationships I have developed, have been able to secure the title deeds to some properties here which meet his rather specific requirements and which I am willing to exchange for a suitably large sum of money. All that is required is that the gentleman, a Duke, no less, sign the title deeds and the deal will be concluded.

"Unfortunately, however, it seems that the Duke has become detained in some other urgent business in his home town and is unable to leave it at present. As such, he has asked for me, or an appropriate emissary, to travel to his castle so that he can sign the documents I have prepared for him and finalise our business. Now, clearly, I am in no fit state to be making such a trip myself, for the journey crosses two valleys on the far side of the mountains and will be, it must be said, a treacherous one – we all know the tales of the creatures who live in these hills, after all. But you, you Philippe could easily make the trip for me! Just one short trip - a week, no longer than that – and my business will be done and you will have earned yourself a percentage of the fee large enough for you to end all this toil and take that girl in your arms just as you have always wanted. What do you say, my boy? What do you say?"

Philippe said yes. How could he do otherwise?

***

When Ursula first heard word of his plans, she made no protest, though her face paled and her heart ran fast. Like all other children of Glenlaw, she had been raised on stories of the evil things that lurked at the threshold of the town and was taught to be thankful for the enchantment that kept them all at bay. So embedded in her mind were the precautionary tales of townsfolk who had wandered and perished beyond the influence of their protective spell that she, like Philippe, like all the inhabitants of the town, never fancied that their lives, no matter how long, would ever carry them further than the boundary posts that marked the end of Glenlaw and the beginning of whatever strange places lay beyond. Theirs was a small world, but it was a safe and a happy one and there were few in the town who ever wished to expand the horizon within which they lived. The very thought of Philippe setting off to cross the mountains alone was a horror to her, but one she bore silently. In his eyes, she saw the desperation and longing with which he lived and against which, she could find no words to compete. "If this must be, it must be," she whispered to him. "You are a proud man and a brave man, Philippe, and for that I love you. Come back to me soon, though. Above all things come back to me. And do not be too proud to be happy."

Two days later, Philippe set off on his journey, every step taking him further from his childhood home than he ever dreamt he would venture. "I will not look back," he told himself. "To look back now would be to acknowledge the possibility I might not return and that is a thought I will not allow. In just a few days I will pass these roads again with my future secure in my pocket and all my wishes fulfilled."

On the first day, he made good progress. Following carefully the map of his route, which Murnock had handed to him, he made his way westwards and through the thick forests that ringed the mountains under which Glenlaw sat. The whole journey to the Duke's castle, he had been told, would take only two days, three at most. "One day in forest. One day over mountaintops and a third day to spend in a grand castle in a far off land. Think of it as an adventure, my boy," Murnock had told him. "Some wonderful story to thrill your grandchildren with."

And for that first day it was an adventure. Every turn Philippe made seemed to unveil a new wonder, some new beautiful aspect of the world he had never seen before. He felt like a child again, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping open in a grin as he stumbled through the woods surrounded by bright flowers, strange birdsong and quick, fleeting creatures the likes of which had no place in the small world he had grown up in. That night he camped out in a forest glade under a blanket of stars that stretched further than he could imagine and brighter than he had ever seen. "Is this the strange, danger filled outside world I have been taught to fear all these years?" He thought to himself. "This is my first day away from home. What other wonders will I find tomorrow?" With these thoughts flying through his mind he fell asleep and dreamt of Ursula and all the grand things he would have to impress her with on his return.

The second day was not so glorious. Under dark clouds that let down a constant grey drizzle, he stumbled his way over the first of the mountaintops that stood between him and the Duke's castle then down into the wide valley that stretched out to the next set of rocky barriers. Working his way across the valley floor, the road passed through a series of small villages and hamlets, each one more impoverished and run down than the last. The people in these places peered at him with narrow, suspicious eyes as he walked, the austere aspect of the area leaving him chilled and unnerved.

At the outskirts of one such village, he came across a young man just a few years his junior and realised with a start that his was the first young face he had seen all that day. Nowhere in any of the villages had there been any sign of children playing, nor even of young men and women working the fields or going about their business. All the faces that had peered at him so suspiciously were old and weather-beaten, the generation of his father or his grandfather. This young boy was an exception and even he, as Philippe noticed when he approached him, was but a poor cripple, his limbs twisted and his spine misshapen so that his head bowed down and turned to one side. He sat at the edge of the road with a large basket of apples to sell to passers by. Philippe stopped to buy one and asked him what this town was called, but in reply the boy would give only an idiot laugh, a mocking, gap-toothed cackle that followed Philippe as he walked on. "These must be the poisoned lands we were told of in school," he thought. "Where witches and ogres take all but the old and the mad and the land itself is turned foul by the black magic cast over it. This is what Glenlaw would be, if not for the enchantment that protects us."

He took a bite from the apple he'd bought – small and malformed, its skin pockmarked and withered – and gagged at its bitter unpleasantness. Once out of sight of the town he tossed it into a nearby ditch that bubbled black and steamed out the thick stench of decay that carried over the whole region and followed Philippe all through the rest of the day.

On the third day, he found the castle. He woke early that morning and wasted little time in gathering his things together and making his way swiftly from the dark, thick woodland he had camped in for the night. Beyond the forest lay a vast stretch of moorland, a bog-ridden terrain covered in slow moving streams and black pools of stagnant water that lay out in front of him as far as his eyes could see. No sooner had he reached this bleak landscape than the castle came into view. It hovered eerily in the early morning mist, a great dark shape that sat at the very far end of the black moor through which Philippe's path led. This was not a fairy tale castle. Not at all. Not the fine, rich man's residence he had dreamed of visiting, but a grim spectre that rose out of the flat bleakness of the surrounding countryside like a dark stain on a parchment or a bad thought suddenly brought to mind.

Philippe stared out across the moor for a long time, his heart sinking to see the forbidding place that was his destination. Only with a great effort did he shrug off his discomfort and, one foot placed firmly and deliberately ahead of the other, begin his journey. "Such foolishness," he told himself as he walked. "Who am I to imagine what sort of house a foreign nobleman might build for himself? Who knows what odd ways they might keep to in these parts? It's no business of mine to even think of it. He can live in a rabbit hole for all I care, so long as I am paid my share."

After five hours walking on the wet path that sucked at his boots and twisted and turned in wide, bewildering curves through the boggy swamps, he stopped to rest on a large rock and took a few bites of sustenance from his provisions pack. The castle loomed over him still. No closer than it had seemed to be at the start of the day, still part obscured by the lingering mist and the thin clouds which were descending from the high mountain tops to his left and his right. Staring at the shape ahead of him, from which he had been unable to tear his eyes ever since the first moment it came into view, Philippe felt a sudden stab of fear strike at his heart. Somewhere in his mind, wearied though it was by his long trek, a voice called to him. A gentle voice, small but persistent, that called repeatedly, telling him to give up his journey now, to turn around and return home. Philippe listened to the voice, sitting on that rock for a long time while a light rain began to fall and the dark shape of the castle hovered black and insistent ahead of him. He listened to the voice until its words died away and he was left alone once more on the silent moor. Then he packed his bag together again and continued his journey.

***

Just as darkness was falling, he arrived at the castle doors, passing through a set of giant, iron gates so rusted and corroded as to be almost falling off their hinges. Stepping wearily into the large courtyard within the castle walls, so exhausted was Philippe from his long journey that he barely noticed the depth of decay and neglect which surrounded him. Dirt and dust gathered in every corner. The courtyard itself was covered in mud and rotting leaves, weeds and pernicious vines grew out of every crevice, up every wall. Broken machinery and rusted work tools lay scattered in the open yard and barely a window left in the building retained even a single pane of glass intact. Philippe noticed nothing of this, instead stumbled blindly forward towards a second great doorway into the dark, cold interior of the castle itself.

"Hello!" he called out into the gloom. "Is anyone there?" His words echoed strangely through the grand entrance hall, but no answer came and though Philippe did imagine for a moment that he saw a shifting in the shadows off in a dark corner of the room, nobody stepped forward to greet him.

"I am Philippe, from Glenlaw," he called out again. "I come with papers from the trader, Murnock." Again his words echoed back to him, again no reply came. Philippe stood in the dark hall, listening to his own breath rising and falling. Outside, the sun had dropped beneath the horizon and the last gleam of daylight was dying from the sky. A wind was rising and the persistent drizzle that had followed him throughout the day was intensifying into a thick, heavy rainfall. "Is anyone there?" He called again, not with hope but with a strain of tired anxiety creeping into his voice.

Again he saw a shifting in the shadows, more certain this time. Something moved in the darkness over by the far corner of the room. He took a step towards it, then stopped again when the shape shifted once more. Eventually a voice called back to him from the shadows. Quiet and strained, as though weary from under-use, as though just waking from a long, long sleep, the voice repeated over and over the same two words, slowly at first, then more quickly and more certainly. "Murnock," the voice said. And "Glenlaw."

With these words, the shape emerged from the shadows in which it was hidden. A great ogre stepped forward. A hideous creature, hairless and naked, its long arms terminating in sharp, filth covered talons, its long tongue flicking around yellow teeth as it tasted the air, savouring the words it kept on repeating. When he saw the creature coming towards him, Philippe froze in terror. His limbs, so weary from their long journey, had no strength left in them to turn and run and, with the realisation that this was indeed the noble Duke he had been sent to visit washing over him, he dropped to his knees and wept. Hot tears fell down his cheeks. Tears of shame at having been so foolish as to believe his dream. Tears of anguish at that dream being finally shattered. Slowly the ogre stepped forward and, with one swipe of his long arm, struck Philippe a blow around the head, sending him instantly into a lifeless stupor.

For the longest time he drifted in and out of consciousness, dreaming all the time of Ursula and the warm arms which he would never again feel around him. "This is not the way our story was meant to end," he thought to himself. "Eaten by an ogre on a dusty castle floor. This is not what is supposed to happen."

Rather than pounce on him and devour him instantly, though, as Philippe expected, the ogre then did a very strange thing. With his sharp claw, he sliced open a vein in the boy's neck and allowed his blood to drain into a large, tin pail. When the flow of blood slowed from a torrent to a trickle, he brought forward a great gown of white muslin and dipped it into the pail, washing it carefully within the thick, red blood of the lifeless boy. The gown completely soaked through, he raised it around his wide, filthy shoulders and, so wearing this gruesome garment, strode purposefully out of the castle door, tossing Philippe's limp body out of a nearby window as he went, a trail of red blood dripping behind him with every step he took.

***

"Oh, how you've been tricked, by boy. Oh, what damage you've caused, my poor, poor boy. You think your story's over, but it's hardly even started. No idea. You've no idea what's ahead of you. Poor boy. Poor, poor boy."

The next thing Philippe knew were these words being whispered over and over in his ear. A soft voice, close to his head spoke gently and carefully, full of compassion and strength. For a long time he slept, not sure whether he was alive or dead, with this voice and these words his only connection to the world. When eventually he opened his eyes, it was to a strange place, indeed. A tiny cottage hidden deep in the woods with warm red rugs draped over every surface and a flickering light from a dozen candles glittering and sparkling through the glass flowers and bright silver charms which hung and swayed on long lengths of string from the ceiling above him. He was lying on a bed in the corner of this room. By his side was a small, old woman who was gently washing his forehead with a cool flannel soaked in lavender water. Her eyes were sharp and wide and a great smile spread across her face when she saw Philippe was waking at last.

"He lives!" she said, a chuckle of gleeful satisfaction rattling through her as she turned to collect a glass of water with which to wet his lips. While she turned, Philippe saw that she wore around her neck a silver talisman of a bird's skull which, in these parts, indicated the wearer to be a witch of some great power. He did not find this alarming, though. There was something so gentle and tender about the old woman's demeanour and so comforting about the place she lived that he felt nothing but safe in her presence.

"You've been asleep a long time, my boy. And a good thing too, because you'll need all the strength you can muster if you are to come through the test you have ahead of you. Here, drink this and eat and when you are finished I will tell you all about it."

Philippe did as he was told and, feeling much revived after eating the strange, bitter tasting soup the witch had prepared for him, sat back in horror as she told her story.

She told of how she'd found his body, twisted and lifeless, in a midden heap by the side of the castle and how she had, using her magic and her skills, nourished the tiny spark of life that remained in it until his mind could return to him. "You are the victim of a grand trick," she said. "A long conspiracy between the ogre, who lived in that castle, and his emissary, Murnock, an old foe of mine who used to trade slave children and other abominations in these very woods. Their plan was to break the enchantment that protects Glenlaw by having the ogre cross the town boundary clothed in the blood of an innocent child of the burgh. That blood was yours and even now I am afraid their plan has worked and the beast is well on his way to wreak his terror upon your home. Make no mistake, if he succeeds everything you know will be destroyed. He has no soul, this creature, only hunger. For generations he has fed upon the villages and towns that surround us here, but he has fed so deeply that there remains little to sustain him anymore. You've seen that already. That depravity that sours the mountain villages here, that is what he wants to bring to Glenlaw. This has been his goal for so many years, his hunger is so great that I cannot even imagine the horrors he will inflict. You must stop him, Philippe. It is your blood which will allow him in and your strength which must destroy him."

Philippe heard all this, his cheeks growing pale with shock as he realised what he had done. "I wanted only freedom to love and be loved," he thought. "How is it possible that so much evil could come from such a simple wish?"

"There is only one way to defeat the ogre, Philippe. He is a powerful creature and to best him you must confront him with the one thing his foul heart cannot stand." With these words, the witch lifted a silver flute from a box that lay on her lap. Shining brightly in the candlelight, she placed it in Philippe's hands, closing his fingers around the strange runes that were carved along its barrel.

"I carved this flute many years ago, forging into it every last ounce of power I could summon. I was not always the old woman you see me as now, you know. I used to be a very powerful witch, a mistress of all the elements, but I gave all of that up to create this flute. That ogre you met murdered my sisters and destroyed my home and I made this as a weapon with which to destroy him. It didn't work. Oh, it helped subdue him and keep him at bay – the music it plays being as poison to his ogre's soul – but I did not have left within me the strength needed to destroy him with it. That job is yours, Philippe. Take the flute. Go now. Find the ogre and destroy him before he destroys every last thing you love."

Philippe's blood ran cold to hear the tale the witch recounted to him. His thoughts ran immediately to Ursula, pure, beautiful Ursula, waiting patiently for him in her father's white house by the riverside, knowing nothing of the horror that was at that very moment on its way towards her. "Ursula, my love," he thought. "If anything should happen to you, I will never forgive myself. I am coming to you, my love. I am coming back to you now." His will so determined, Philippe set off on his journey back home that very morning. Back across the bleak moorland, back through the dark, mistrustful forests, following again the route that Murnock, the fiend, had set for him.

As he walked, he thought over all that he would say to Ursula when again he held her safely in his arms. "You will have fresh flowers in your hair every day, my love. You will have gardens filled with butterflies to dance in, my love. And songs, such songs I will sing for you, if only you will be safe when I return."

His pace was quick, much faster on his return than he had been when first making his way along this road. He walked all day, barely passing for rest, and for most of the night, stopping by the roadside for only a few hours sleep when his legs would carry him no further that day. With every step, he held the silver flute in his hands. As soon as the witch had given it to him, it had felt comfortable to hold. His fingers curled around it easily and naturally, caressing its keys as though they had done so every day of his life, even though he had never so much as seen such a thing before. "You see," the witch had said. "It belongs to you now. It knows what its purpose is and that you are the man to fulfil it."

So walking along the road, Philippe raised the flute to his lips and began to play. Nervously at first, but with gradually more and more confidence, he blew simple tunes that spiralled and rang through the forests and across the mountains. Strange reels of music poured from his lips and fingers, ever more complicated melodies that danced around him, note after note that played themselves out almost before he had thought to invent them. And as he played, so the landscape around him changed. Where once there was hard, unfertile ground, now flowers sprang up as he walked, fresh leaves sprouting from trees and through the air birds sang and bees buzzed through groves and clearings that only a few days before had been silent as a grave and as dry as death itself. Such was the magic the flute could bring when he played it.

Every step he took brought him closer to Glenlaw and the further he travelled, the more obvious it became that he was following directly in the footsteps of the ogre he was hunting. The very step of the beast seemed enough to poison the land. There were animals left for dead by the side of the path, rivers that ran black and fetid where the creature had crossed them and in the mountain villages, already impoverished and downtrodden, Philippe found a new devastation that was beyond anything he could have imagined. Every house lay in ruins. In every field, the crops were burned to nothing. Even the old men and women who had survived so many trials in this place had not been spared. Their bodies filled the streets, broken and cast aside as though the creature had killed them in a rapture, killing for the pure, furious pleasure of it, with no reason and no heart.

Reaching the last of the villages, he came across again the crippled young apple seller, whose twisted, bloated body he found in heap by the roadside. On finding the boy, Philippe wept tears of shame and broke his journey for a moment to dig the boy's grave and lay his body to rest. Having done this, he again raised his flute and blew a fierce, passionate reel that shocked the air and caused bright red apples to spring suddenly from the branches of nearby trees. Philippe picked one such apple, biting into it with determined relish as he continued on, his pace quicker, more urgent than ever.

By noon on the second day, he arrived back at the stone marker that was the threshold of Glenlaw. So fast was his progress that he had travelled along the entire road in less than half the time it had taken him in the opposite direction. For each step he took along the way he had peered into the distance, hoping to catch some sight of the ogre he was chasing, longing for some sign he had a chance of catching his prey before it arrived at Glenlaw. With the passing of the marker stone, so passed the last such hope. Within just a few minutes walk, it was clear that the first of Philippe's fears had come true. The enchantment was broken. The ogre was in Glenlaw and wreaking the same havoc there as he had done in every other village along the foul road he had travelled.

The scene was as if from a nightmare. Blood ran in the gutters. Buildings fell in burned out ruins and the screams of the dying and of the bereaved rang out through the smoke filled air. In the streets lay the broken, devastated bodies of those brave men of the town who had stepped forward to confront the beast. The ogre had killed without pity. Like a fox in a henhouse, he killed indiscriminately, out of instinct not hunger. Like a hurricane, he had blown through the town, leaving only death and pain in his wake.

Amid the chaos, Philippe came across an old schoolmate who stood, eyes wide with shock, staring out across the devastated main town square. "Tell me what happened here," he demanded, shaking the poor, distraught boy by the shoulders. "Which way did it go?"

"It was like a devil," the boy whispered. "There was nothing we could do. It was a devil rising among us. There was nothing..."

"Which way?" shouted Philippe again.

"To the east. To the riverside," the boy said, pointing the way with one outstretched finger. "But you mustn't go! Philippe, you mustn't go!"

It was too late. Philippe had left him already. The boy's finger hung in the air, pointing the way in which Philippe now ran. To the east. To the riverside. To the white house where Ursula lived.

***

He found her in her father's drawing room. In his arms, he held her in a long embrace, not saying a word, hardly daring to draw a breath. From the open window a gentle breeze came that lifted her soft golden hair so that it rose around them, its delicate feathery touch lighting on his face like a hundred shining fingertips. Later on, this would be how tried to remember it. The soft breeze and her golden hair. The silent embrace that lasted forever.

The entire room was awash with blood when he burst into it. So much blood that it seemed as though the sun itself had turned red and bathed the town in the colour of nightmare. He saw Ursula's mother first, torn in pieces and cast aside in the centre of the room, her dead eyes staring to the doorway in an expression of bewildered outrage. Then he found her father. Then, yes, dear friends, then Ursula herself.

He did not know how long he held her for, her lifeless body propped up unnaturally in an armchair in the corner of the room. In those minutes, all the hopes he had ever clung to in life disappeared. His mind itself left his body, too fragile a thing to comprehend the horror that was before him. When it returned, a change had come over him. He felt a rage rising inside him. A fierce anger overwhelmed him, cutting through his grief and pulling him to his feet. Gathering his flute in his hand, he turned and, not stopping to look behind him, set off in search of the ogre.

It did not take him long to find it. Following the screams of terror and trail of carnage it left behind it, he cornered the beast in a house near the town hall. It was crouched over the body of an old man, its talons dripping with blood and viscera, its great, black eyes wide and alert, the terrible red gown still hanging around its shoulders. With one defiant blast on the flute, he grabbed the ogre's attention so that it turned towards him, scowling in irritation. A second blast brought a shriek of pain that shook the beast to its feet and brought it striding towards Philippe himself. A third blast stopped it in its tracks and a fourth and a fifth left the creature crouching in agony, its hands clutching at its ears as though to claw away the source of the pain. Seeing the beast so prostrate, Philippe dropped the flute from his lips for a moment and stood watching the monster writhe and twitch in discomfort. Steadying himself for the final blow, he raised the flute again, but before he could play a note, the creature sprang forward, reaching out towards Philippe with its long, filthy talons, its features twisted into an expression of pure hatred. Quickly, Philippe danced aside and blew, a fierce melody flying from his lips, a rising reel that wrapped itself around the ogre, winding its magic around and around until the beast was trapped in fury and agony. Still Philippe played, the tune racing through the air, twisting the fabric of the world as it went until what stood before him was no longer the hated ogre, but rather a glass statue of the beast, freezing it as it stood, arms outstretched in mad defiance, features twisted in disbelieving misery.

Philippe stared at the statue. In every bright facet of the glass, he saw himself reflected back. A hundred Philippes stood before him, each one with a flute in their hands, their faces their clothes all bathed in the blood of his loved one. With a shudder of distaste, Philippe made one final blast on the flute. A note so fierce as to crack the glass and shatter the beast into a thousand tiny fragments that flew through the air and crunched under his feet as Philippe turned his back and left the room.

***

And so our story ends, my friends. A little longer than I meant it to be, a good deal shorter than it might have been. It is an old story, that one, and one told a different way each time you hear it. On some days, it is true, Philippe has a happier end to his tale, reaching the town in time to kill the ogre and save his precious Ursula. But not today. Today I think the story ends just as I have told it. And as to what happens next? To that there is even less agreement. Some say Philippe threw the flute away, its magic spent, and settled down happily with a girl from a neighbouring town who loved him just as much as Ursula ever could have. Others say he kept the flute and passed the rest of his days wandering with broken heart from town to town, playing his magical tunes to raise the fruits from the earth and purge the region of all its monsters, never settling in one place ever again, right to the day of his final reward. Who can tell which one is right? Endings are such messy, uncertain things. I always prefer beginnings, myself. And, anyway, my throat is dry from so much talking. Will no one fill a glass to wet a poor storytellers lips? Will no one?
