The Dunfield Terror Read online

  THE DUNFIELD TERROR

  William Meikle

  First Edition

  The Dunfield Terror © 2015 by William Meikle

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

  Broken Sigil

  Clockwork Dolls

  Night of the Wendigo

  The Exiled

  The Hole

  Tormentor

  Check out the author’s official page at DarkFuse for a complete list:

  http://www.darkfuseshop.com/William-Meikle/

  This one is dedicated to everyone who works through winter storms to make sure the rest of us can sleep easily.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks again to all the folks at DarkFuse, whose professionalism and dedication to the genre is second to none.

  And special thanks to Jim McLeod, whose Ginger Nuts of Horror blog is the best wee horror blog on the planet, and one that has done a lot for my profile in the business. Ta, Jimbo.

  1

  Present day

  I like riding the plow, especially when the wind howls like a banshee and snow spatters like gunshot against the window. I look after the fifteen-kilometer stretch of highway from Trinity heading south to Irving Station and on stormy nights I have it all to myself—it’s just my hunk of mobile metal and me against the elements.

  Round about these parts, there are plenty of elements to contend with. Most of the year round it’s wind—lots of wind, and rain, heavy at times, torrential at others, in spring and autumn—if we ever get either. Some years there’s just two seasons—winter and summer. And then there’s February—a special case of hell hereabouts—a frozen hard month during which it’s mostly blowing a gale and snowing. And that’s on the good days. This wasn’t one of those.

  The storm had started that morning—flurries only at first, but with enough wind behind it to show its intent. It ramped up through midafternoon until it was dumping a couple of inches an hour in a raging gale. I’d been out in it with the plow since four o’ clock—three hours straight now trying to keep at least a lane of the highway clear. I moved snow and once my back was turned the wind moved it back. Then we did it all again. Some nights I manage to keep the road clear until the storm blows out, on others I’m forced back to the depot to sulk. So far we could just about call this one a draw, although I was starting to think I was going to lose.

  I turned at the westernmost point of my route, in the gas station parking area. The station itself was quiet—the lights were on but there was no sign of any customers. Mary was moving about inside—I could just see her through the swirling snow. I debated stopping for coffee, a donut and a chat—Mary was always good company on nights like this, and she’d also like having a friendly face turn up, but the snow was coming down hard, and even ten minutes at this stage could mean big banks of drifts.

  I headed back north, looking forward to an eventual break and that long-awaited coffee, although George and Jimmy would be poor substitutes for Mary’s charms. I was thinking about her as the plow roared and did its thing, leaving a neat line of banked snow in my wake. I took the switchback at forty, singing along at the top of my voice to the music in my headphones.

  I’m walking on sunshine.

  I’ve been doing this most of my adult life—well, the winter parts at least. Some of the guys in the bar have told me that they don’t know how I do it, night after night in the wind and cold and snow—but in truth, I find it kind of peaceful. And more than that—and here’s something I don’t tell those guys over a beer—for me, it’s a duty, a way to pay my dues to the town that raised me. There’s a kid along Witlow Road that thinks I’m a superhero, a dark avenger keeping the storm from engulfing his house. I kinda like that idea—secretly, of course—to admit it, especially among the beer crew, would lead to months of piss taking that would be well deserved.

  It’s not like I ever have any archenemies to deal with anyway. Once the storm really gets going, there’s just the road and me—sometimes I’ll see a moose or a coyote. Even rarer there’ll be a car or pickup, following along gingerly in my wake, someone smart enough not to try to overtake the plow, but not quite smart enough to stay off the road on a night like this one.

  Tonight was a quiet one. I had the run of the road to myself. All I saw was the almost mesmerizing dance of falling snow in the stretch lit by my lights, and the reflectors on the poles on the roadside to keep me on the straight and narrow. The snow was getting heavier still as I reached the high point of the switchback but that didn’t bother me—I’d done this so often now I could do it in my sleep—indeed I often did, my winter dreams being full of dark road and white snow.

  I was relaxed, so much in control that I almost didn’t notice when things started to get weird.

  It happened on the last dip of the switchback. Something caught my eye ahead, just off the left edge of the road, a lighter area in the darkness. At first it was just a patch of fog. It took me a few seconds to spot that it seemed to glow where it was picked up in the headlights. It appeared to be moving at speed, keeping the same distance between us as we climbed and crested the last hill before making our way down to Trinity Junction and sea level.

  I tore off the headphones as my heart kicked into overdrive. I pushed the accelerator as hard as I dared, hoping against hope that the strange fog wasn’t what I suspected it to be.

  It matched my speed change—the glowing patch was doing fifty and accelerating as we descended, and it was still there just ahead and to the left when we reached the foot of the hill. I hit a slightly larger drift on the bend at the bottom as I tried to cut right and take the corner onto the Trinity road. The plow shuddered, sending a jolt up my spine that distracted me, took my attention off the road—just for a second, but it was as if the fog had been waiting for an opening. As I turned off the highway, it pounced—that’s what it felt like—an animal on the attack. It swallowed the plow in a second. All of a sudden I could see nothing out the windshield but opaque white. I was forced to slow down—I wasn’t about to come to a halt though, so I kept the plow in as straight a line as I could manage and prayed.

  Metal squealed and the steering wheel bucked in my hand, threatening to drag the plow to the left. I knew enough to know there was a deep roadside ditch on that side, and just past that a steep fall off down to the inner bay. If I went down there, I might not be coming out until spring. I pulled hard to the right and got her straightened up, but something wasn’t finished with me yet. The strange diffuse light still filled my view, and once again I heard metal squeal as if in tortured pain. A crack, loud like a gunshot in the plow’s cabin, ran all the way up the window on my left door, and when I put my hand on it, the fingertips of my gloves started to smolder as if burning.

  The pale glow outside got brighter.

  I threw the plow right—not too far, as I also knew there was a smaller ditch on that side of the road. I went left again, rammin
g the accelerator to the floor—I was now much more worried about something catching me than I was about not being able to see. Metal tore beneath the cab, and I had a bad moment when I feared I was caught up on a fallen branch but, with a screech that sounded like frustrated rage, the plow finally kicked in and I sped off and away along the narrow road. The pale glow faded; I could see the road again. The glowing fog receded in my rearview mirror and I remembered to breathe.

  * * *

  I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to get much more work out of the big plow that night. The engine started to cough and splutter as I turned off the Bonaventure junction and into the campsite hollow, and something ground noisily on the road beneath me as I got into the town itself.

  I managed to baby her along to the depot and arrived just as George Hislop was bringing in the heavy gritting truck from his turn around the town roads. I gave him a wave as I got out of the cab, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me—he stared, wide-eyed, at the front of my rig. I closed my side door—new crack on the window and all—and walked round the front to get a look for myself.

  “I think I hit something hard,” I shouted.

  George didn’t reply. He was still looking at the blade of the plow—or rather, at what had been a blade until a few minutes ago. Now it was only a lump of twisted metal that looked like it had been melted then rapidly cooled into something that almost resembled its previous shape but was too twisted to ever work properly as a plow again. It certainly wouldn’t be much further use to the town that winter.

  I didn’t even have to ask what could have done this—I knew only too well. I’d seen its work before.

  George looked over at me.

  “The fucker is back again—isn’t it?”

  “Yep—and this time it has come all the way up to the highway—have you heard of it doing that before?”

  George had gone back to looking at the plow blade.

  “Nope—never heard of it going much past the peninsula. But who knows with the fucker. This is going to be bad, isn’t it?”

  I nodded and headed inside the depot.

  I had some calls to make.

  2

  From the journal of Duncan Campbell, March 1954

  I need to get this down while it is yet fresh in my mind, and maybe the simple act of writing it will bring some focus and rational thought to the madness that has befallen our little experiment. I fear that what I have seen—and done—here will haunt me for many years to come, and I can only hope that this record may go in some small way toward convincing the powers that be to leave well enough alone. Despite our good intentions at the outset, it is now quite clear we should never have even entertained the thought in the first place and I wish to blazes that I’d stayed at home when given the chance.

  The military chaps are all over the story like a rash, of course—anything with the potential for destruction like we saw could not help but interest them. Muir has told them that nothing is salvageable, that the experiment was a total failure. But I know how their minds work. They will not be able to ignore it. They will want to poke and prod and examine and, ultimately, use it as a weapon.

  It cannot be allowed.

  * * *

  “Get it done, or don’t bother coming back.”

  That’s what they said at the ministry just before they packed us off to Southampton to catch the naval vessel to Newfoundland. They told us it was for Queen and Country—a matter that might make the Empire great again—groundbreaking was a word used more than once. What they didn’t tell us was that the Atlantic crossing would be foul, the food would be worse, and the weather once we got to our destination would be subarctic, and getting colder by the day. What with that, and the suspicion shown to our small group of scientists by the enlisted men of the crew, it was not the happiest of boat trips, especially for someone like me, whose previous seagoing experience was limited to several trips on the Firth of Clyde ferries.

  I stood on deck, a gale-force wind trying to blow me back to Blighty while simultaneously soaking me with spray. It was my turn to watch as a small group of frozen scientists and completely disgruntled sailors tried to put together Muir’s patchwork contraption of chrome, wire and electrical components, all of which were a complete mystery to me. We’d been at anchor for an hour and I was already wishing I’d stayed home.

  At least before the war they’d been sending me to warm, dry factories in the West Country to experiment on docile sheep and cattle unlikely to do me a mischief. But the Nazis changed everything; Hitler’s thirst for a technological advantage meant that the Germans threw vast amounts of money into research—not just weapons but advanced biology and physics. They might have been mad bastards, but they advanced German science by leaps and bounds. And it wasn’t until the fighting was over and the dust settled that we in Britain realized we were no longer rich enough to keep up.

  That’s when I got recruited to the think tank. I had a request to pop up to London, where I was ushered into a roomful of people I knew only by reputation. We had tea and scones with the minister, and, in return for a nice raise and the promise of a better pension, a simple directive.

  “Come up with smart stuff nobody else has thought of yet.”

  Not much of a brief, but it had been enough for us to be going on with. Since the late forties, we’d got by with the occasional report, a couple of not-too-disastrous demonstrations, and the promise of results at an unspecified later date. It had been an easy, if uneventful, life, and I was already looking forward to early retirement, that promised pension, and some gentle rounds of golf.

  Everything changed with the new decade. A new broom swept Whitehall, one that demanded results and almost brushed us away with the rest of the dross. Professor Muir arrived at the opportune moment and became both savior and Satan. He had a reputation to maintain—iconoclastic, eccentric and abrasive, but also undoubtedly brilliant. He’d been the man responsible for jamming the buzz bombs’ guidance systems, for finding an antidote to a plague the populace never even got to hear of, and for finding a way to clog enemy harbors with rampant seaweed. I’d met him twice, at conferences in Edinburgh, and he always struck me as being ferociously intelligent—and knowing it. In another country he might be feted and honored with awards and medals—but in Britain he’d insulted too many people in power, rode roughshod over too many regulations. They gave him the think tank in the hope that he’d run us quickly into either oblivion or ignominy.

  Instead, Muir once again did something remarkable.

  My own specialty is in mammalian biology, with chemistry second and applied mathematics a distant—very distant—third. Muir’s explanation that we sat through back at the ministry had gone completely over my head. The only bit I understood was his opening, and closing, questions.

  What if we could make a battleship invisible?

  The professor had made some esoteric calculations on many sheaves of paper, and had brought along a small contraption of chrome, copper and wire that he invited us all to inspect before making the minister’s fountain pen disappear. He couldn’t bring it back again, of course, and there were many around that table that accused him of sleight of hand and trickery, but Muir had done just enough to persuade the ministry that a field trial was at least a possibility. They in turn insisted on somewhere away from prying eyes. With the help of our friends, the Canadians, we started to plan the trip to Newfoundland, although I will admit that I did canvass hard for an alternative spot in a quiet bay in the Mediterranean.

  But Newfoundland in what passed for spring in these parts it was to be, and after several months of frantic preparation, Muir finally announced he was ready. I still had little clue as to how he proposed to do it, or even whether it was at all possible, for the final experiments had been undertaken above my clearance level. For a while I even held out hope that Muir meant to take the trip without me altogether, but that was dashed three days before departure.

  “I need you, Duncan,” he said, mollifyi
ng me somewhat with a large glass of some excellent Scotch. “You keep me on the ground. Besides, a trip like this can never have enough Scotsmen.”

  We both laughed at that, but there was something in my countryman’s eyes I hadn’t seen before. It looked like doubt—and possibly more than a trace of fear. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t be drawn on the matter, even after we’d made serious inroads into the whiskey. All I got from him was a muttered oath.

  “Damned stupid research assistants who cannot follow simple instructions deserve all that they get. It is not my fault if they can’t get themselves out of a spot of bother.”

  In the morning I had a stinker of a hangover, but I remembered what Muir had said. I asked around. Dick Roberts, a young lab technician, hadn’t been seen for several days, but that was all that was known, all anybody knew. I didn’t get to the truth of the matter until much later— and by then, of course, it was far too late.

  Young Roberts was only the first of many.

  * * *

  I was thinking about Muir’s bottle of Scotch while I stood on the windy deck of the battleship. A dram or two would have been most welcome at that point, but I knew better than to leave my post. I might not be a naval man, but on this trip it was best to obey the chain of command; it was either that or risk a stint in the brig. Captain Squire had taken pains early on to show that he was in charge and would not hesitate to prove it. At some point I knew that he and Muir would have a serious disagreement, but so far they had kept to their separate corners. I only hoped the peace lasted long enough to get the job done.