As I increased the power to the yellow valve, more demonic figures in the center circle showed solid form. Indeed, it was soon packed tight with them, a throng, a horde, of cavorting, red figures packed together so tightly that they stood shoulder to shoulder, completely filling the space inside the circle, all screaming as they burned in hellish flame. And even as I had the thought, I knew what I was seeing; I was indeed looking beyond a veil to part of the great beyond I had not previously encountered.
I believe I was being given a vision of Hell itself.
Not that I believed in a literal Hell of course, but I knew that old tales, religion, and mythology often had their origins in glimpses of compartments or realms of Outer Darkness that the human mind had to try to rationalize to understand them. Perhaps Hell as understood by the wider world was always merely a construct built to make sense of a glimpse of somewhere else, a door through to this burning, red horror I was currently watching.
Wherever it was, the older, inner circle was still exuding heat and the room was heating up by the second. I was starting to wonder whether the fire that had consumed the cellar ten years before had been intentional at all. I did not have time to dwell on it, for if it got any hotter, I was going to have to beat a hasty retreat to avoid ending up in the northern sanitarium alongside the last man to see the same sight.
I pushed the yellow valve to as high a brightness as I dared, and that did seem to bring a momentary coolness wafting through the cellar, but any respite was short-lived, and within seconds the red flames lashed harder still against the pentacle. I quickly went through several more permutations of color and modulation as the heat grew almost unbearable and almost cried out in relief when, just as I thought I would have to flee, I set a wave of rapid alternating pulses of blue and yellow washing through the room.
The fires inside the circle dimmed and faded as if doused by water. The demons screamed soundlessly, threw their limbs around in a jerky, almost comical, dance, then they too dimmed and went quiet, leaving only the original, winged beast standing in the center. It looked at me and it appeared to be smiling as it too finally faded and dissipated before disappearing entirely, leaving me alone in a room awash with blue and yellow and a cool, almost chill breeze that came through the wall of the river beyond.
I sat still, watching, for the length of time it took to smoke two cheroots, leaving the pentacle running. The only sound was the hum from my battery and the thin whine that came from the valves as they dimmed and faded. The washes of color splashed across wall, ceiling, and floor, but that was the only movement to be seen. There was no reappearance of any demon, dancing or otherwise, in the inner circle.
After my smokes, I lit my oil lamp again and switched off the pentacle, ready to switch it back on at the first sign of any redness or flame. The cellar remained quiet and cool. And I realized something else. It felt empty, and somehow I knew for a fact that I was the only presence here.
Banks sat up straight in the chair, suddenly hit by inspiration that had eluded him until now. The golden circles and markings on the floor weren’t the cause of the problems on the base; his reading had just made that clear.
The circles are attempts to contain the demon, possibly even an attempt to control it. The saucer is sitting in a prison the Germans made for it.
It had held all these long years from the war until now. But somehow, the bonds that held the demon had been slipped, if only a fraction. And now whatever lived in that prison was trying its best to escape.
He let the men sleep while he sat at the table, pondering his epiphany. He couldn’t make heads or tails of the talk in the journal of color washes and valves, at least none that would help him. From what he could gather, the man, Carnacki, had a piece of equipment that he used in his work that utilized the color theory mentioned, but as they’d found no sign of any such equipment on the base, Banks didn’t think the Germans had used the same methods.
He looked for the other bag of papers before remembering that it must still be back in the hut; he hadn’t seen it recently, hadn’t given it any thought, and now that he needed it, it was in the one place he couldn’t, wouldn’t go to fetch. He remembered that it had been occult symbols he hadn’t understood, blueprints for building the saucer, and those, impossible, shots of the saucer in orbit. It all added up to something that he thought he should understand, but which remained too far away from how he’d always understood the world worked.
But merely the fact that the demon could be controlled, even expelled, gave Banks hope, and that was something that had been in short supply this past twenty-four hours.
He sat there, wide-awake now, idly reading passages from Carnacki’s journal. The man had obviously had dealings with Churchill, and knew something about all this demonic mumbo-jumbo, but it was like reading a fairytale for all the sense it made to Banks. He could see nothing that would be really useful in bringing their situation to an end.
He was still of a mind to sit this one out, wait for the relief and tell them his theory, but any thought of an easy time of it was thwarted after a few hours of respite. It started, as before, with a high chanting, monks singing in the wind.
Banks quickly roused the men.
“Get the plugs full in, lads,” he said, almost shouting so that they’d hear him. “And remember the Gaelic. It’s the only thing that saved us before. Get ready to move.”
“We’re not going back outside again, surely, Cap,” Wiggins replied. “We’ve only just got fucking warm.”
It was only on hearing the question that Banks realized he’d come to a decision while sitting in the quiet room.
“No. We’re not heading out,” he said. “We’re heading in. It’s time to face this thing. This ends now, one way or the other.”
- 14 -
He led the men out into the main chamber. As soon as he opened the room door, the sound of the chanting got noticeably louder, even through the earplugs.
“Dhumna Ort!” he muttered, which helped, but didn’t deaden the sound entirely anymore. He motioned the men forward, and was pleased to see that they had all unslung their weapons, and had fallen into formation behind him. Hynd brought up the rear as Banks led the other three quickly across the large empty space to the double doorway that led to the hangar corridor.
He realized he had no clear plan, but it felt good to be on the move again, and with a definite goal in mind. The first step was to get to the saucer room. He was hoping something else would come to him by the time they got there.
The heat in the corridor beyond the double doors was almost stifling, but Banks wasn’t of a mind to divest himself of his outerwear — the experience in the hut had impressed on him just how quickly the temperature might change. It was getting uncomfortably sweaty inside his gear, but it was a small price to pay if it stopped him turning like the dead men he’d seen with the Oberst.
But they wouldn’t be able to put up with such heat for long, for it was going to sap their strength just as fast as any prolonged exposure to the cold. He headed up the corridor at double time. The chanting got louder, it got hotter, and Banks wasn’t quite sure if he was running into action, or running to answer the call of the dark void of eternity.
As long as we get to the bloody hangar room, the why of it doesn’t really matter.