“John,” shouted Pooley anew, “wake up damn you.”

Omally’s eyes opened and he peered up at his friend. “Bugger you, Pooley,” said he, “out of my boudwah!”

“Pull yourself together, man.”

Omally’s eyes shot to and fro about the room in sudden realization. “The Professor!” The old man lay draped across his chair, his mouth hung open and his breath came in desperate pants. “Bring some water, or better still scotch.” Pooley fetched the bottle. Omally dipped in his finger and wiped it about Professor Slocombe’s parched lips.

The old man’s head slumped forward and his hands came alive, gripping the arms of the chair. His mouth moved and his aged eyes flickered back and forth between the two men. “W-where is he?” he stuttered. “Has he gone?” He tried to rise but the effort was too much and he sank back limply into the chair. “Give me a drink.”

“What price Dimac,” said Pooley to himself. Omally poured the Professor an enormous scotch and the ancient tossed it back with a single movement. He flung his glass aside and buried his face in his hands. “My God,” said he, “I knew he was powerful, but I never realized, his force is beyond comprehension. I set up a mental block but he simply swept it aside. I was helpless!”

Pooley knelt beside the Professor’s chair. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked, placing a hand upon the old man’s arm.

“The creatures!” said the Professor, jerking himself upright. “Has he taken them?”

Pooley gestured towards the broken study door. “With apparent ease.”

Professor Slocombe climbed to his feet and leant against the fireplace for support. Omally was pouring himself a scotch. “He will have to be stopped!”

“Oh fine,” said Omally. “We’ll get right to it.”

“I know little of the Catholic faith,” said Pooley, “who was Pope Alexander VI?”

“He was not what one would describe as a good egg,” said Omally. “He was father to Lucretia Borgia, a lady of dubious renown, and of five or so other byblows along the way. He achieved his Papal Throne through simony and died, so the fable goes, through mistakenly taking poison intended for Cardinal Adriano de Cornetto, with whom he was dining. He is not well remembered, you could say.”

“A bit of a stinker indeed,” said Pooley, “but a man of his time.”

The Professor had been silent, but now he raised himself upon his elbows and looked deep into the Irishman’s eyes. “I believe now that my previous proposition was incorrect. The Dark One does not have form, he assumes the form of others by recalling their ambitions and increasing their powers to his own ends. This alien force is capable of acting upon a powerful ego, adding to it and enlarging it until it becomes a power of diabolic magnitude. Alexander VI died before his time, and I suggest that he has returned to carry on where he left off. Only now he is more powerful, he is no longer a mere human, now he can fully realize his ambitions unburdened by the fear of retribution. He thinks himself to be invulnerable. Let us pray that he is not.”

Omally shrugged. “So what chance do we stand?”

“This is earth and we are alive. Anything that encroaches upon us must by definition be alien. It may appear to have the upper hand, but its unnaturalness puts it at a disadvantage.”

“He didn’t look much at a disadvantage.”

“What puzzles me,” said the Professor, “is why he did not kill us. He knows us to be a threat to him, yet he allowed us to live.”

“Good old him.”

“It is possible,” the old man continued, “that his powers are limited and that he can only expend a certain amount of energy at one time. Certainly the destruction of the cellar door must have required enormous force, the creatures alone could never have accomplished that. It was reinforced with steel.”

“What about the light which surrounded him?” queried Omally. “It was blazing when he entered but it had quite dimmed away when last I set eyes upon his accursed form.”

“What happened after I blacked out?” Pooley asked.

Omally turned away. “Nothing,” said he in a bland voice, but the violent shaking of his hands did not go unnoticed by Jim or the Professor.

“It looks like another sunny day,” said Jim, changing the subject.

“Will you gentlemen take breakfast with me?” asked the Professor.

There is little need to record the answer to that particular question.

18

As September neared its blazing end, the heat showed no sign of lessening. Now the nights were made terrible by constant electrical storms. Omally had penned Marchant up in his allotment shed, having read of a cyclist struck down one night by the proverbial bolt from the blue.

There could now be no doubt of the location of the Church of the Second Coming. Nightly its grey-faced flock stalked through the tree-lined streets of the Butts Estate en route for its unhallowed portals. Father Moity was going through agonies of self-doubt as his congregation deserted him in droves.

The Professor stood at his window watching them pass. He shook his head in sorrow and pulled down the blind. Many had seen the five red monks moving mysteriously through the midnight streets. It was rumoured that they attended at the rites of the new church. The Professor felt the hairs on the nape of his neck rise when he thought of the alien monstrosities which inhabited those saintly crimson robes. He had seen them again only the night before, clustered in a swaying group outside his very garden gate, murmuring amongst themselves.

A streak of lightning had illuminated them for a moment and the Professor had seen the ghastly mottled faces, muddy lustreless masks of horror. He had slammed shut his doors and drawn down the iron screen he had fitted for security. His house was almost in a state of siege now, and he was certain that his every move was closely observed.

Omally had been acting as messenger and delivery boy, freighting quantities of thaumaturgical books which arrived daily in wax-paper packages at Norman’s corner shop. The old man rarely slept now, and his hours were spent committing to memory vast passages of obscure Latin.

“Every day draws us nearer,” he told the struggling Irishman as Omally manhandled another half dozen weighty tomes into the study.

“You must surely have half the stock of the British Museum here by now,” said the perspiring John.

“I have almost all I need,” the Professor explained, “but I have another letter for you to post.”

“Talking of books,” said Omally, “I have loaned your Dimac training manual to Archroy.”

The Professor smiled briefly. “And what became of yours?”

“I never owned one,” said Omally, “it was a rumour put about by Pooley. It kept us out of fights.”

“Well, good luck to Archroy, he has suffered more than most over this affair. I hear that as well as losing his car, his magic beans and the use of his thumb, he was also unlucky enough to have had his arm broken and his head damaged by a lunatic in a Fair Isle jumper.”

Omally, who now no longer adopted that particular mode of dress, nodded painfully. “I am grateful that my companions at the Swan have been discreet over that particular matter and I must thank my good friend Jim for the permanent loan of his second suit.”

The Professor whistled through his teeth. “Two suits Pooley, a man of means indeed.”

Omally sipped at his drink thoughtfully and knotted his brow. “Will all this soon be over?” he asked. “Is there any end in sight?”

The Professor stood at the open French windows, the setting sun casting his elongated shadow back across the room. “Great forces are at work,” he said in a distant voice, “and as it is said, ‘The wheels of God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small’.”

If that was intended as an answer to Omally’s question the Irishman failed to understand it, but as the old man’s back was turned he took advantage of the fact and poured himself another very large scotch.