The Last Bus

Saturday night, a rather solitary bus stop...

It’s dark, it rains cats and dogs, the single lantern just flickers a few seconds before going out again... and the last bus for today is [censored] late.

You and the other passengers try to get closer together under the small shelter, but cannot avoid getting an uncomfortable shower blown by the icy wind directly into your face.

Suddenly, lightning. For a full moment the whole scenery is bathed in light, then it’s dark again - followed by thunder and a loud shriek from one of the people waiting. And wasn’t there a dark figure standing right across the street for just a second?

Possibilities

1 It’s just your imagination - a rock or a stick illuminated by the lighting. Still, one of the people waiting is a bit paranoid, and hasn’t taken his medicine recently. Try telling him that there wasn’t anything there in the middle of a rain storm...

2 There is someone out there - a serial killer, neatly equipped with army raincoat, night glasses and a pump gun. The killer likes to strike during dark and stormy nights like this... The more victims, the better.

3 During the lightning, one of the people waiting could clearly see a projected image of Lloigor, one of the twin obscenities, searching for victims. Lloigor appears as a titanic, winged mound of undulating tentacles, and has the power to control great winds, which it can use to snare and capture any unfortunates who chance upon it...

© Philipp Mählmann

Floating

An investigator wakes late one night to discover that he and everything else in his bedroom are floating several inches in the air. As soon as he realises this, there is a loud crash from below the floor and everything settles back into place, leaving him alarmed and confused. Cracks in the foundations and knocked over items show that whatever happened was a real event.

Possibilities

1 A Yithian time traveller tracking down a mythos tome has heard that the investigator has a copy of it. In true Yithian style, it decided to make the search easier by inventing a combination anti-gravity device and sleep ray to transport the entire building to a spot where it could examine the house at its leisure. However, thanks to a gap in its knowledge of human physiology, the sleep ray failed to work as planned, and the Yithian aborted the effort when it realised the investigator was awake.

The Yithian will try again, as soon as it manages to perfect the sleep ray. A number of people in the neighbourhood will find themselves falling asleep at the strangest times and places over the next few days as they become ‘volunteers’ in its testing.

2 A dying lloigor is trying to exact revenge against people with mythos knowledge, using the last of its failing strength. The floating effect was an unsuccessful use of its implosion power. A series of implosions during the night radiate out in a spiral over several miles from the point where the lloigor is trapped, too weak to move or solidify, but planning further acts of vengeance after resting for a while.

3 Subsiding foundations caused the investigator’s house to drop several inches, and he was woken by the commotion as the building settled. The foundations are being undermined by a gang of criminals tunnelling into the cellar from the basement of a nearby home. The collapse filled in their tunnel, but they’re determined to get into the investigator’s cellar one way or another.

© Chris Kerr

Safely Behind Bars

Mr David Bradley – a violent murderer currently serving his final year of an eighteen-year sentence – was found late yesterday evening swinging gently from the ceiling of his cell. He had hung himself using a thick leather belt.

The penitentiary is renowned for its high suicide rate, but the recent increase is unprecedented. Mr Bradley is the fourth inmate to take his own life in the last month. The prison governor, Mr Torben Stones, is investigating the deaths but refuses to comment on the possibility of corruption amongst the prison staff.

A brief visit sufficiently demonstrates why anyone incarcerated there might wish to take their own life: the drably-painted, crumbling brickwork; the dour-faced guards; the loud and abusive inmates; and the poor recreational facilities; all help to contribute to the general atmosphere of gloom and oppression.

Possibilities

1 For thousands of years the area beneath the penitentiary has housed an immaterial lloigor consciousness. It lay inert for most of this time, only recently - with the construction of the prison - did it recover from its torpor. The lloigor, named K’huterrinlis, seeks to escape by channelling a telekinetic field up to the surface through which it can escape, unfortunately a field of that length requires considerable energy. K’huterrinlis leeches this energy from the unresisting minds of the humans above.

K’huterrinlis’ mere presence is enough to create a noticeable pall of depression and despondency over the prison. This (along with draining the prisoners’ will-power) is the reason for the increased rate of suicides. However, the prisoners are not the only ones to feel the lloigor’s insidious presence. Even senior staff (like Mr Stones) are losing their motivation and the will to continue. More deaths are inevitable.

2 Mr Torben Stones, the prison governor, is a devout servitor of Eihort. Beneath the penitentiary, Mr Stones has created a network of twisting and interconnecting tunnels - a labyrinth. It is in these that he summons his master, the Dark Bargainer. Each week a prisoner is taken into the labyrinth and is questioned by Eihort. Given the alternative, most of the frightened convicts agree to Eihort’s demands. After he has been impregnated, Eihort uses the Cloud Memory spell to make the subject suppress all knowledge of their terrible ordeal.

Occasionally the spell is not fully effective, and the unfortunate victim understands the changes they are experiencing. These individuals would rather die at their own hand than the squirming proboscides of Eihort’s grubs.

Mr Stones plans to spread Eihort’s brood by only impregnating those who are nearing the end of their sentence. The convicts then leave and several months – or even years – later, the brood emerges.

3 Torben Stones is no longer completely human. While his body is of Terran origin, the mind belongs to something greater – a Yithian. Similar minds are housed within almost all the prison staff.

The Great Race uses the prisoners as subjects for temporal mental transference. In this way, the prisoners can escape incarceration by travelling 450 million years into the past. Meanwhile, the convict’s body is inhabited by a Yithian’s consciousness enabling it to study the current period, these individuals are usually smuggled from the prison so they can interact with the world outside.

This is an equitable arrangement; the Great Race can continue their research without the difficulty of having to fool the subject’s friends and family, while the human minds were allowed comparatively more freedom. There is just one small problem; many of the prisoners’ minds are brutal and violent. They caused considerable damage when they inhabited the powerful, conical bodies. While many minds were pacified; terminal force was the only solution for extreme cases. When this became necessary it meant that the minds were returned to their original forms leaving the human body devoid of consciousness. The suicides are faked, in order to disguise the prisoners’ true cause of death.

© Hadley Connor

Smiling Jack and Mr Smith

Some years ago, ventriloquist Drew Smith made a radical change to his vaudeville act. Instead of mediocre "Gottle of gear" and "He's behind you" routines, Smiling Jack (his puppet) became a bully and "forced" Drew to cower and beg. This bizarre angle kick-started his career and he quickly became a celebrity.

Apparently inspired by his audience's response, Drew allowed the act to become steadily more strange. Smiling Jack often hit him on stage and reviewers wrote of Drew's disturbingly realistic acting. Rumours started - Drew was unstable and could be heard arguing and pleading with Smiling Jack in his dressing room.

Events took a turn for the worse when, halfway through a show and with tears streaming down his face, Drew implored his audience to rescue him from his tormentor. The shocked silence that followed was described by the papers as "Breath-taking" and "Macabre and beyond decency."

That night Drew Smith was found dead in his dressing room, his arm ripped from its socket. Smiling Jack was a never found.

Possibilities

1 Drew Smith had made a dark pact in return for fame. A demon possessed Smiling Jack and first gave him what he had asked for - then tortured and destroyed him. Once Drew was mentally destroyed the demon lost interest and killed him brutally. Then, still in its little clown outfit, it sought new prey.

2 Drew is a sorcerer who has used Smiling Jack as a juju doll to contact creatures from beyond. He has been fooling the otherworld creatures into thinking that theatre audiences are actually worshippers. Unfortunately the entity he has contacted is demanding more from his congregation and wants them to demonstrate their faith. Eventually the thing became tired of Drew's reticence and returned to the otherworld, taking the doll and Drew's arm with it.

3 Drew is a sorcerer using his act to perform mass suggestions on his audience. He has trapped a lloigor in Smiling Jack, and the suggestions which are "demanded" of him by the lloigor affect everyone in the audience.

The suggestions affect everyone emotionally, and are very useful to Drew. For instance, pity (for Drew) usually engenders some charity, anger causes increased criminal activity that mask Drew's other activities and so on. However, Drew miscalculated - one of his audience persuaded to "rescue" Drew burst into his dressing room and killed the puppet by cutting it off Drew's shoulder.

© Nathan Gribble

The Midlock Dragons

The above is the precis to a collection of papers. Little more can be gleaned from the papers which require wading through pages of old English handwriting.

It would be a considerable accolade to any scholar to prove that the Midlock Dragons were the original source of the St George and the Dragon legend.

Possibilities

1 The legend is mostly true, but the dragons were in fact a group of astral entities known as lloigor. George was an investigator of an earlier century and, armed with considerable magics, vanquished the lloigor. The lloigor would like to return, but the stone circle from which they drew their power was disrupted.

2 George did not fight any true dragons, but instead freed Midlock from the tyrannical reign of a local landowner. The description of the battle hints that the ‘dragons’ used magic, and there is still some of this lying around in the old manor.

3 There was a battle of some sort, but no concrete evidence to say whether this is the true source of the legend or not.

© Steve Hatherley

An Outbreak of Cancer

Doctor Jones will eventually require outside help, and will call upon the authorities or perhaps an old friend from medical school.

Possibilities

1 The cancers are punishments inflicted upon the population of Hodgeston and its surrounds by an ancient lloigor. The lloigor is trapped in the rocks, but has been woken by quarrying. It is slowly growing in power, tapping the life-force from those in and around Hodgeston. The cancers are a side effect of this life drain.

Eventually the lloigor will be strong enough to free itself from the rock, at which point it will disappear to wherever the lloigor go. By that point, however, there will be few left alive in Hodgeston.

2 A secret War Office munitions factory is pumping waste products into the sea at Tenby, just along the coast. The currents are bringing this waste around to where Hodgeston sends its half dozen fishing smacks. The cancers are a direct result of eating contaminated fish.

When the War Office learns of the  cancer’s potential link to its munitions factory, it sends soldiers to secure the town and suppress all further news. The poor people of Hodgeston are left in the hands of the War Office, which is more interested in weaponising the cancer than it is in treating the victims.

3 Several months ago there was a meteor shower above South Wales. One of the meteors did not completely burn up and landed in a small pool in the moors above Hodgeston. The meteor is highly radioactive and the pool drains into Hodgeston’s water supply, contaminating it.

© Steve Hatherley