Excerpt: For Whom The Plot Rolls

It was the noise, faint and sepulchral and on the very edge of his hearing, that caused his fingers to come once more to rest on the keys. In the sudden clackless silence of the dusty and deserted attic room, he cocked his head on one side and listened hard for the sound to come again and confirm that he had heard it the first time.

For long moments there was nothing but the terrible quiet of a world in the grip of fear. Ben licked his lips nervously as he cast the direction of his gaze from wall to wall and down the inky stairwell that formed the only entrance to the room, seeking the certainty of confirmation that the faint and unpleasant sound had not been mere imagination and fearing that that confirmation may yet arrive.

There was nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard. All was quiet and still both within the room and without; Ben fingered the straggles of his unkempt beard in his unease and turned his attention back to the typewriter still sat uncaring on the desk, raised his hands to the ready again and set off on his lonely novelling path. He wrote of a world gripped by winter while sat in a world devastated by disaster; the experience of the last days empowered his fingers and drove his descriptions past anything he could have managed just weeks before. His heroes continued their quest across the land, and...

...there, again. The sound had returned, undeniably this time. There could be no denying the grating, bipartite whistle that sounded so shockingly close below him. As if some massive twinned flywheel was flying at two different speeds on unoiled bearings, the cry pierced his ears with its dopplering and inharmonious harmonics. It was here, whatever it was, closer than before. It was here.

A crackling, fizzing hiss followed the whistle, malevolent and guttural. It brought forth images in the back of the mind, unwanted images of dark days in man's past when the unseelie and the fey were not merely stories to entertain the young but dire warnings of the world outside mortal ken. Ben sat paralysed by it, utterly motionless in the hope that he would make no sign and give no hint of his presence to whatever stalked the house below him.

What may have happened to the others in the safehouse he did not know, did not want to know, felt indeed that the very notion of it were like to drive a man beyond rational thought in its vileness and horror. It was enough to know as certainly as he breathed air that his erstwhile allies were gone, and more than gone.

The whistle sounded once more, fluting and high and gratingly low at once, seeming to carry words within it that he could not make out and would not understand. It was a searching call, the sound of a hunting predator, and he could only hope in his heart of hearts that it was seeking alone rather than calling to pack mates to join its chase.

Oh god, it was directly below him. Its footfalls sounded in his ears and vibrated up through the floor to his feet, heavy and ponderous and with a terrible gelatinous quality to them as if with every step it deformed somehow into yet more unpleasantnesses, were such a thing even possible. The steps made a slow circuit of the rooms below, searching in a manner that firmly denoted intelligence (although such an intelligence! No man should ever have to face such a concept of alien cognition and irrational rationality) and slowly eliminating potential hiding spots from its list.

It is to Benjamin Magnificent's credit that he could keep himself firmly silent throughout all of this, standing firm in his seat and gritting his teeth against the primal urge to scream terror and defiance at this unknown and undefined thing clumping with deadly purpose among the rooms below him. It is equally to his credit that he kept his rational mind about him and pondered carefully the potential escape routes available to him.

The windows were of no help. From this height a jump would cripple him for sure and the creature, whatever it may be, would be free to run him down and finish him at its leisure. Climbing, too, was out of the question; the rain-slick brick of the exterior offered no handholds and the occasional windowsill was not enough to allow the descent. He cursed himself silently in the private depths of his mind as he realised that the only way out was through the very way the beast would come for him.

His reflections ceased; he looked up in horror. It was climbing the stairs!

Such vast and ghastly blasphemies against all that was good on this earth have rarely been seen by mortal eyes, and it was not without a serious effort of will and inner strength that Benjamin could look on the shadowy figure as it mounted the steps into the dim light without losing his sanity. Making that terrible twinned whistle as it came, its step ponderous and inevitable, the vast form loomed out of the darkness.

Ben did scream then at last, a tearing wail of pure and unmanageable terror ripped from his throat by the sight of the beast. It stood eight feet tall, its flesh rippling unpleasantly over an amorphous and only vaguely humanoid frame, oscillating gently in the half-light as if wearing its skin like a costume. It was a livid pink in colour, like an open and suppurating wound, with splodges of bilious yellow colour dotted across it at occasional intervals as if its own body was rejecting such an impossibility from within.

It clenched its fists convulsively, fingers like lumpy sausages clashing together with a disturbing ripple, took another step on feet like toeless bags of flesh, and its mismatched and unblinking eyes tried without success to focus on its prey. Still it came on, driven by senses other than the five man knows, step by painful step, head wobbling uncertainly on its body.

Dear god, it was in the room with him! And now came his chance: Benjamin seized his typewriter under one arm and sprang to his feet with a rush of adrenaline, standing poised on the balls of his feet ready to spring one way or the other and make a break for it. As he moved, the creature finally focussed on him, its huge watery blue eyes full of an undying hatred for the entire human race, and it stamped its huge feet and screamed a full-throated cry.

“Blobby Blobby Blobby!”