Prologue

The opening pages

It was a dark and stormy night.

 

Actually that’s not true.

 

It was calm and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It wasn’t dark either. I’d like to say it was eerily moonlit but this is London so instead everything was bathed in the comforting orange glow of the city. The universe just doesn’t have a sense of drama any more.

 

Actually at the time I was quite happy with it not being a dark and stormy night, for one thing I wasn’t being soaked with rain and I could actually see where I was going. Besides it was pleasantly cool and one of those residential semi-suburban areas where there’s nobody around this late so it’s completely quiet. Well you’ve got the sounds of distant cars �" as I said, London �" but otherwise I was alone.  

 

Normally I quite like walking at night; I find it calm and relaxing. A chance to gather my thoughts. In this case though I actually had work to do and would have taken a car if I’d been able to get it to start this morning. It would have spared me from a tube journey sitting opposite a man who kept coughing. And by coughing I mean he appeared to be trying to forcibly eject his lungs.

 

To summarise: It had not been a portentous night. It didn’t help that I was tired and I was pretty sure my being here was a complete waste of time. So I may not have been in the best frame of mind for noticing little details when I walked up to the house �" after checking it was the right one, I wasn’t that out of it �" and knocked on the door.

 

Nothing happened. To be fair, it was fairly late so I knocked again. Then I realised there was a buzzer and was about to ring it when I heard the shuffling behind the door and it opened slightly to reveal a balding, slightly pot bellied, middle aged man in jeans and a white t-shirt with brownish stains. He looked greasy and with the fairly horrible smell coming off him I completely failed to register that there was a whiff of copper. Detail number one.

 

He looked at me with a puzzled expression �" fairly understandable �" and I dug out my warrant card.

 

“Mr Mullen?” He kept looking at me with a slightly unfocused gaze �" detail number two �" before nodding.

 

“I’m sorry it’s so late, my name is David Summers (Actually true), I work for the Metropolitan Police (That isn’t.). We’ve been led to believe that you’ve come into possession of certain items relevant to our investigations, which may have been sourced illegally. May I come in?”

 

He stood there silently for a moment, and reluctantly I got ready to pull out my search warrant. It was technically valid, but there’s always the risk of it spiralling into a tornado of paperwork afterwards. Besides it tends to put people on guard a bit more.

 

Fortunately he grunted, and stepped aside to let me in. I blame my relief about the warrant for missing detail number three �" he hadn’t actually opened his mouth yet. Walked past him and shivered as he closed the door behind me. I was about halfway down the hallway when my brain finally kicked into gear and started processing some new details.

 

One: Now that I was close enough I could feel a kind of warm emanation from the next room. I knew what that was; it was exactly what I hadn’t expected to find and worse.

 

Two: It wasn’t that cold outside, but I’d shivered as I’d walked past Mullen. I stopped dead as I realised there was a similar emanation coming from him, but cold. I had a damned good idea what that was.

 

Three: Now that I was inside the smell of copper was stronger. It was coming from the dark red stain seeping down the carpet on the stairs. Just like the not-actually-brown stains on Mullen’s shirt.

 

I span round to face him just in time to see his body go slack as he opened his mouth and a mass of wormlike tentacles exploded out of his face.

 

You know what?

 

I probably should have started this story earlier.

Author's Note

Not really happy with it once he walks in the door, I think there should be a little more there. Anyway any advice is welcome.