I considered setting up on that open, flat surface, but Churchill would want this job done properly. I would have to descend into the bowels of the beast so to speak. That was easier said than done, for there were no obvious exterior hatches. To get inside, I had to manhandle the bally box up the railed steps of the turret, and back down the other side once I got inside. As a result, I was dashed hot and bothered before I even started to investigate the interior of the vessel.
I had enough light coming in from above me to open my box and get out the small oil lantern I carry within it. I lit it up and started to look for somewhere I could set up my circles.
It was immediately obvious that I was going to have some difficulty. Conditions were cramped inside the submarine, to say the least, and there appeared to be no single spot of floor large enough to contain my defenses. The air inside the vessel felt heavy and slightly warm; it stank, of burnt oil and stale breath. To my left was a tall and wide bank of meters and dials I could make no sense of whatsoever, and to my right long lines of piping and wiring stretched off in both directions down the dark corridors. There was no sound save any that I was making, and even the tiniest movement, the merest scrape of sole on deck, was amplified in whispering echoes that ran up and down the length of the boat.
My lamp did not penetrate far into the darkness, and I was suddenly all too aware of Churchill’s tale of the thirty dead crewmen who had met their end, locked in this metal box under who knows how many feet of cold water. That made my mind up for me. I could possibly have spent more time searching for a better, wider, spot, but now that I was here, I wanted to get things done as quickly as possible and get back to the bottle of scotch and some living company.
As I have said, I was in a tight spot. So I improvised. I stood in the main control area, which was slightly toward the bow under the turret, and set up a pair of small circles in chalk that were as wide as I could make them in the space I had available. Then I transcribed the pentagram, noticing that there was now only just, by a matter of inches, enough space for me to stand with my feet together inside the defenses. That, obviously, meant that my valves for the pentacle were much closer together than I would have liked, with only the span of a hand separating them, but I managed to quickly get them aligned in the peaks and troughs of the pentagram, and switched on the battery pack.
The resultant hum echoed and thrummed through the whole bally vessel, and a wave of cold rushed through the corridors, a cold, damp, breeze as if a heavy fog had descended. My heart thudded faster, and my knees went to jelly before I remembered that I had stood in worse bally spots than this, facing real danger, not imagined spooks. I berated myself for letting the dark and Churchill’s story get to me.
I stepped into the defenses, lit a pipe, and composed myself.
It was time to begin.
I will not reproduce the spell that I used here. Even inadvertent reading of these old incantations is thought by practitioners to cause unforeseen and unwanted effects, so it is probably for the best not to tempt fate. Besides, I did not get the opportunity to finish even the first stanza of the chant.
A great wall of darkness rushed at me out of the aft corridor, and all of the valves of the pentacle flared at once, so bright I was forced to close my eyes against the sudden brilliance. I heard the valves whine, and felt again the wave of cold and damp wash over and around me. I tasted salt spray at my lips.
When I opened my eyes again, I thought the brightness had temporarily caused a problem with my sight, for although I stood inside the shining pentacle, and color washed over and around me, there was nothing but black velvet dark beyond the boundaries of my circles.
I felt the weight of the darkness press against the pentacle, as if something solid were testing itself against the defenses. Cold seeped up from the deck, gripping at my ankles and calves as if I stood in a deep puddle of freezing water, and my teeth started to chatter until I clamped them down on the stem of my pipe.
The valves pulsed and whined and the green one in particular was under a deal of strain. The darkness got darker, the cold got colder, and I felt something in my mind, a searching, questing thought, as if the dark was looking for a way inside. I knew I had to resist. I could not succumb, for if I did I would never leave this vessel alive.
I started to recite an old Gaelic protection prayer that had proved efficacious for me in the past, mumbling through my clenched teeth, focussing all my attention on the words.
The darkness continued to press, hard, against all of my defenses. I struggled for breath, felt coldness pour down my throat, salty again, like the sea, and the dark swelled and closed in even tighter.
I summoned up all the strength I had in me and continued the Gaelic right through to its end. I called out the last words.
Dhumna Ort!
The blue valve blazed at my last shout, and all at once the blackness washed away, so suddenly it might never have been there at all. I stood there as the pentacle valves dimmed to a normal level and blood started to pump faster in my veins, warming parts that had been in danger of being frozen.
I had no need to call up one of Churchill’s favored spooks.
There appeared to be one on board already.
- 5 -
Banks stopped reading and shut the journal with a snap that caused Hynd to look up from his cards and raise an eyebrow.
“More fucking demonology bollocks and shite,” Banks said with a grim smile. The sarge went back to the card game, but Banks sat by the stove, staring into space. He didn’t believe his own oaths. It hadn’t read like bollocks and shite. And that was the problem. It had read like cold, hard fact, and he believed every word of it to be true. He still didn’t see how it applied to their situation here. But he was afraid he was getting closer to an answer, one that he wasn’t going to like.
The card game was still going strong, but Banks wasn’t in the mood to join in— besides, he usually lost to the men, either through bad play on his part, or by design to help morale. What he really needed was a stiff drink to settle his gut down, but the nearest scotch was back on the boat, and well out of reach. Instead, he made for the kit bags and began rummaging through the heap of books, notebooks, and papers that had been collected in the hangar room.
It looked like everything was in German apart from the journal he’d lifted from the oberst’s desk. He ploughed through a thick log book of the base operations, looking for clues as to their fate, reading list after list of supply deliveries, personnel coming and going. The fuel consumption figure in particular caught his eye — it was remarkably low, consider the German’s had been on site for many months. He was looking for clues as to what had befallen the base, but there was nothing in the logbook to suggest an oncoming calamity.
He moved on to what appeared to be the oberst’s personal journal, and an ongoing record of the saucer’s construction. The name Carnacki was obvious in places among the German, but Banks’ grasp of the language wasn’t sufficient to the task of deciphering it enough to get any kind of understanding.