Michael Scott Hand

If you missed Part 1 you can find it here.

Ripped from the pages of an age-yellowed penny blood, the page stained and smeared, the cover lost and the author dead to time, yet from these half-writ fragments forms a story in the mind…

Peter awoke a short time later with no idea of where he was. The cleaver fell loudly to the flagstones beneath his feet and the din rang in his ears. He had been having a strange dream that he could not remember; nor did he have any wish to. As ringing in his ears faded he heard birds chirping and realised that it must be morning. And then there was a second knock at the door, the first of which had startled him awake in the first place.

Peter let Father McCafferty in. The priest could barely see in the dim light of the blacksmith’s workshop. “Peter,” he chided. “Did you sleep in here last night?”

Peter rubbed the sleep from his eyes and nodded. He carefully placed the sharpened cleaver atop a workbench and stood away from it. “Didn’t sleep,” he said. “Not really.”

Father McCafferty moved towards the corner of the room where the fire in the heath had burnt low and began adding logs to it. After a moment or so the room was flooded with both warmth and light. “I know you have your doubts, Peter,” the priest said to Peter.

Peter noticed that Father McCafferty was wringing his hands together and that bothered him. For as long as the blacksmith had known the priest he had never seen him look afraid. Father McCafferty was the one who comforted those who were in pain, giving advice and blessings when needed. He had consoled Peter as his father had been lowered into the grave at Chargraven.

“I’m no fool,” said Peter. “The man is a charlatan. Or worse.”

“I understand why you would think so,” said Father McCafferty. “But you must listen Peter, and listen well. There are dark things in this world. There are secret things. And sometimes it is men like us—not soldiers or heroes—who must do what needs to be done.”

“Are you telling me that you believe in vampyres?” Peter asked the priest flatly.

“I’m saying,” said Father McCafferty. “That in the darkness, strange things for which we do not yet have proper names still squirm.”

Peter shuddered and Father McCafferty moved to the workbench where he had placed the sharpened cleaver. It required both hands for the old man to lift comfortably.

“Careful, Father,” said Peter. “You could take off someone’s head with that.”

They met the Customer (Peter was still loathe to call the man a vampyre hunter) at mid-morning in the town square, as had previously been discussed. In hindsight they should have chosen a more private location, for serveral of the townsfolk stopped to gawk at the stranger and the priest and the blacksmith all stood together beside the lamp post.

A fog had settled across the village, but it was not so thick and would clear soon enough. Somewhere beyond the fog, the sun shone through, brightening everything with a soft celestial halo.

“Thank you, Peter,” said the Customer as he inspected the edge of the cleaver.

“Hoy there!” called a voice and it was Martha Grables. She was carrying a wax paper bag that contained her shopping, but she was not one to let this opportunity for information-gathering pass her by. Whatever they told her, Peter knew, the rest of the village would know by sundown.

“We are doing some much-needed maintenance around the graveyard, my dear woman,” said Father McCafferty. “This young fellow is the son of an old friend of mine from down south,”

“Manuel Churchill,” the Customer, who was still holding the cleaver, introduced himself. Martha merely sniffed and nodded then shuffled away. The explanation it seemed was wholly less exciting than she had expected. Peter wondered what her response would have been had they told her they were hunting vampyres.

The fog began to clear as they moved away from the village and a seeping greenness closed in around them as the reality of the dales bled into their vision. Chargraven cemetery contained several hundred graves, dating back as far as the sixteenth century. In fact, there were even older stones in the Chargraven, but they were not recognised as graves.

By the time they reached the graveyard the fog had cleared and the sun beat down on them. Peter felt uncomfortably warm and took off his coat; he noticed the vampyre hunter did not do the same.

A small wooden shack stood at the edge of the graveyard. This was where Haldur lived, who dug the graves and generally tended to repairs. He stood there waiting for them and spoke to the man who had introduced himself as Manuel Churchill as though they too were old friends. Haldur looked past the vampyre hunter for a moment, noting the presence of Father McCafferty and Peter the Blacksmith, and then nodded firmly.

Peter wondered if there was anyone Manuel hadn’t deceived into believing his ruse—still he could not gather what benefit the man hoped to gain from defiling tombs and spreading stories about monsters.

“Haldur will make sure we are not disturbed,” said the Customer as he returned to the others. “Though we should be prepared that word may still spread about our activities and—at times—townsfolk do become alarmed by the presence of a stranger in a graveyard.”

“You’re the only stranger here,” said Peter grimly.

“No Peter,” said Manuel Churchill, vampyre hunter. “There is another stranger within the Chargraven… one far more dangerous than I.”

The first thing you need to know about the Sphere is that it’s not a sphere.

The Sphere is a geodesic polyhedron.

Beyond the Sphere is the Blue Sky; also the Dark Sky. But the panels of the polyhedron are neither opaque nor transparent; they reflect (and do not reflect) both the interior and the exterior in equal measure and thus, it is impossible to see within the Sphere from without, or without the Sphere from within.

The Sphere is an island, a particle, floating in that which we call the Imagination or also the No-Place. It is not real, yet it is real. It is real because I am telling you about it. It assumes a reality. It cannot not exist, for it does exist, right now in these unwieldy words.

Unwieldy words give rise to unwieldy worlds. The multiverse is not truncated but flows out to eternity like the spilling of water and as water evaporates it does not disappear but is merely altered.

The environment inside the Sphere might remind you of a desert. The sand is white-yellow. There is sunlight and there is darkness but they are mere simulations. It is night for one hundred minutes. It is day for one thousand. It is night again; who knows how long it will last. There is no moon or stars. There are no clouds. The sky within the Sphere is empty.

Within the Sphere two great trees interlock, for this is the truth of Yggdrasil. Roots and branches entwine with roots and branches both downwards and upwards, the Tree is not visible. It is unknown whether it is the Cause or the Consequence. We only know it exists because of the way it shifts matter around it.

The energy made manifest within the Sphere splits it through the centre as a great Prismatic Column. The Facility has been built around the Column in order to contain these great energies. The Facility has only one objective: avoid Event-Y.

Event-X is inevitable and cannot be averted.

The Facility bends beneath the gravity of the Prismata, but is not broken. The Sphere holds. The energy of creation is routed through Synaptic Switches and into vast vats of Neurochemical Reagents.

The Facility is surrounded by 65,536 black monoliths.

The energy of the Prismata is dispersed within these dark surfaces and within them can be seen dancing motes of colour as new universes are birthed. Yet each monolith can store only so much energy. It is the job of those who work at the Facility to ensure the balance is maintained and to adjust the flows when necessary.

The flows are controlled by unlabelled buttons and switches. Each Department has a User Manual that is one million pages long. The people who work here are called Homunculus and they wear tan uniforms with name patches sewn on. Their consciousness is fleeting and limited; they have no back story that is not an illusion and they serve no purpose except to adjust the flows.

Ripped from the pages of an age-yellowed penny blood, the page stained and smeared, the cover lost and the author dead to time, yet from these half-writ fragments forms a story in the mind…

Peter watched the whetstone spin. The candle on the shelf had burned low; it was early in the morning. He eased off the pedal and watched the whetstone slow.

Peter had learned the trade from his father and, in the decades since, had sharpened many blades—but none such as this. It was a mighty cleaver, of a size you might expect to find in the kitchen of a giant. Peter did not believe in giants, of course, for Peter was no fool.

Now, in the flickering candlelight, Peter studied the edge of the blade. He knew the most important part of his job was to ensure the tools he shaped were “fit for purpose”; he only wished that he didn’t know what purpose this blade was meant to serve.

The Customer had told him, without hesitation, that the blade must be sharp enough to sever a human head. Furthermore, it must leave no doubt to the fact that the blade cut all the way through on the first try, for if it did not, he would not get a second chance.

A weapon then; a tool for murder.

A younger Peter perhaps, would have felt some pride at the idea. Such was the romantic lure of the blacksmith’s hammer, beating swords to fine points. But the military used guns now and those were manufactured downriver. The soldiers who did carry blades did so only for ceremonial reasons and thus their sharpness could not be considered essential.

Peter’s mind spun like the whetstone and he wondered what he was going to do when the Customer returned. By sharpening it so had he become an accessory to murder? No, for surely it could not be considered murder if the victim was already dead…

On the previous night, as Peter was sweeping the floor of his workshop, Father McCafferty had arrived and along with him—the Customer.

“Listen to him, Peter,” Father McCafferty had said. “And do not rush to judgement.”

The Customer had bustled in and set aside two heavy travelling bags, but left on his long brown coat and wide-brimmed hat. Peter offered the men tea, which they refused and then the Customer began to speak:

“Had I not been passing your faire village, I might not have known,” the Customer began. “Yet I bore witness to a crying woman who claims her son was taken from her and was pleading for the help of whomsoever happened to be passing by.”

“Miss Sally,” said Peter, unimpressed by the Customer’s story. Everyone knew that her son Sammael had gone missing a week ago and that Miss Sally had gone mad with grief. Peter did not know the woman well (Miss Sally Norton had little need of a blacksmith), but felt bad for her nonetheless. It was sad, yet not entirely unheard of, for people to vanish into the misty moors surrounding Easthill.

And now: the Customer had appeared like some ghoul to prey on the woman’s sadness, insisting that the boy had been taken. He spoke in rushed, disjointed sentences, telling Peter about a strange malady that persisted even unto death. A sort of demonic possession, the Customer had attested, that dwelt in the bodies of the dead and thirsted for the blood of the living. He spoke, of course, about vampyres.

“Do you do this often?” Peter had asked the Customer.

The Customer’s eyes glinted. “Indeed,” he said. “I am a vampyre hunter—it is my true calling, the responsibility passed unto me from my father.”

Peter scoffed, but the Customer ignored him. Instead he reached into one of his travelling bags and took out the cleaver. “Can you sharpen this?” he asked and then proceeded to tell Peter exactly how sharp the blade needed to be.

“I fear Miss Sally’s son has been taken in thrall by a vampyre residing in the Chargraven,” he explained. “I have already visited the graveyard and witnessed the evidence, but if my suspicions are correct I will require aid…”

“Of course, we will help,” said Father McCafferty, answering on Peter’s behalf. The blacksmith thought it clear  the Customer was mad, but was willing to defer to the priest for now, at least.

“A holy man is most useful indeed,” said the Customer and then crossed the room to grip Peter by one thickly muscled arm. “Your arms Peter. A strong man like you would also be of great assistance.”

Which was how Peter had agreed to not only sharpen the Customer’s blade but also help him slay a creature of darkness. But now: as the barest sliver of daylight turned the horizon to a thin straight line, Peter realised how foolish he had been to agree. And Peter was no fool, for he believed in vampyres even less than he did in giants.

Giants, at least, he had seen the footprints of, preserved in peat.

The story continues here.

It rained in both worlds on the night Scott Dyson became the Interloper.

The clouds above the city seemed to writhe and strike at each other like duelling serpents. Then came a thunderclap, borne from the impact of colliding worlds and Scott Dyson—not yet the Interloper—was awake.

Lightning flashed, letting light through the arched bedroom windows and burning the shapes of the garden onto the back of his eyes with hideous intensity. He touched the bed, but his hand found only the gentle indentations that she had left; lingering warmth, already fading.

Something shattered. Scott lurched out of bed and dressed quickly; automatically. He squashed his feet into his sneakers but didn’t tie the laces. He called her name into the darkness and pulled a jacket across his shoulders.

“Jocelyn?”

Scott moved into the corridor. At that moment it felt like nothing existed beyond it, except for the storm. Rain struck the roof like hoof beats: pounding, pounding, thundering. He saw a glass vase smashed on the floor, darkness pooled around it.

Lightning flashed again, illuminating the front door. It was open and swinging. Rain sluiced in, wetting the carpet.

Scott went to the door and looked out onto the street. The storm howled back at him. He lingered there, as though some invisible membrane prevented him from stepping through. Or perhaps he simply needed more time to summon the courage that one small step required.

The door slammed closed behind him and there was no going back. Between the hedges the iron gate was open and screeching in the wind. Beyond the garden, the street had been dismantled and rearranged so that he could only follow in one direction.

Rubbish bins had been overturned and cars had been tipped onto their sides. Trees were upended from the earth, their branches hopelessly tangled and bound again by electrical cables that thrashed and crackled.

Fragments of paper whipped around Scott’s ankles; detrius of memory.

It was as though Jocelyn had exerted some magnetic force on these objects as she’d passed, dragging and pushing them aside. And now Scott too was drawn along in her wake. He treaded through puddles and noticed that the wind carried an unlikely mixture of scents—dirt and sulphur and extravagant flowers, half-rotted. The storm pushed back at him and his clothes grew heavy as he was drenched with rain.

Scott “Billy” Dyson—still not yet the Interloper—kept walking.

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