Through Glass Darkly: Episode Two
Read Through Glass Darkly: Episode Two Online
Authors: Peter Knyte
Tags: #Science Fiction - Steampunk
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Knyte was born and grew up in North Staffordshire, England, but now lives in West Yorkshire, where by day he passes himself off as a mild-mannered office worker, while by night he explores whole worlds of imagination as an intrepid writer.
When not tapping away at his computer he spends his time slowly transforming his garden into a Japanese style tea garden, rock climbing, snowboarding and cooking.
Through Glass Darkly is his second novel.
For more information about Peter and the worlds that he is exploring please visit:
www.knytewrytng.com
OTHER TITLES
Other titles by Peter Knyte
The Flames of Time
Through Glass Darkly – Episode 1
Forthcoming titles by Peter Knyte
The Embers of Time
The Ashes of Time
Through Glass Darkly – Episode 3
TITLE PAGE
Through Glass Darkly
Episode Two
Peter Knyte
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2016 Peter Knyte.
Peter Knyte asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
First paperback edition printed 2016 in the United States and United Kingdom
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9930874-4-8
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9930874-5-5
No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval
system without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Clandestine Books Limited
For more copies of this book, please contact:
If you find any errors in this book please let us know so they can be corrected for other readers.
To report an error, please email: [email protected]
Interior designed and set by Clandestine Books
www.clandestine-books.co.uk
Cover art and typesetting by Mina Morcos
Aka ‘ex nilo’ at 99Designs.com
Through Glass Darkly – Episode Two
Clandestine Books Limited
Peter Knyte
DEDICATION
DEDICATION
For H.G. Wells, Alexander Dumas, Jules Verne, Bram Stoker, Nikolai Tolstoy, A.A. Milne, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, John Buchan, John Wyndham and Anthony Hope for the years of entertainment and inspiration.
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter 17 - Doubts
Chapter 18 - Hunter
Chapter 19 - Fear Itself
Chapter 20 - Post Mortem
Chapter 21 - Suspicions
Chapter 22 - Discovery
Chapter 23 - Recovery
Chapter 24 - Restoration
Chapter 25 - Tracks
Chapter 26 - Traces
Chapter 27 - Insights
Chapter 28 - Reunion
Chapter 29 - Hunted
Chapter 30 - Destruction
Thankyou
Sample
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With thanks to John and Tasha Williamson, Lisa Bath, Philip Hall, Claire Thompson, Jeanette Clewes, Timothy Payne, R.J. Barker, Matt Broom and Helen Marsden for providing the invaluable feedback and proofreading of this title, which has enabled me to improve it in countless ways.
I hope I can return the favour sometime.
DISCLAIMER
DISCLAIMER
This book is entirely a work of fiction, and while it plays fast and loose the names of historic figures, places and events, no part of this book should be viewed or understood to be factual, or attempting to be factual in any way. This story is set on other worlds of imagination, which at best may bear a coincidental similarity to our own, and in all probability will be wholly different and bear no resemblance to any actual people, personalities, locations, circumstances or events whatsoever.
CHAPTER 17 – DOUBTS
I thought my mind must’ve played some bizarre form of trick upon me, and that I’d imagined that glimpse of Ariel’s face upon the creature before it fell to the hard concrete of the warehouse floor below.
I was still taking no chances though, and after reloading my gun I stood at the shattered office window with the large calibre Webley aimed straight at its now still form as it lay sprawled below.
Shelby and Blake were fussing around where Riley was buried beneath the light-table which the creature had flipped across the room onto him, and it took me several minutes to convince one of them to get down to the warehouse floor in order to guard the creature until help arrived.
I could understand them wanting to make sure their Sergeant wasn’t injured, but I wasn’t going to allow the thing that had attacked him get away again while we made sure.
As soon as Shelby was down there next to the creature with his gun trained on it, I immediately moved to go and help Blake in moving the table.
It was a massive thing constructed mostly of glass and steel, and weighed a huge amount. So much so that I honestly feared for Riley’s life when I thought about the force that it must’ve hit him with.
But we managed to lever it off him eventually, to discover him unconscious, and with what looked like a bad break to his right leg.
We managed to get him into a better position and splint the leg with some pieces of wood and a couple of belts, but decided against moving him further without a stretcher.
I was just heading down the narrow stairs at the end of the offices when one of the other search teams arrived with Truant and his dog. They came in cautiously, still clearly expecting trouble, but then relaxed when they saw me and Shelby.
There was a lot of interest in the creature, but that didn’t stop them from sending a man out to the radio car in order to get some medical assistance for Riley and deliver the good news that we’d got the creature.
It was only then that I finally got to take a closer look at the monsters face.
As soon as I turned the things head I could once again see the pale human skin and eye that reminded me so much of Ariel.
The carapace shell around the exposed skin looked cracked and fragile, and without thinking I reached forward to see if I could remove a bit more of it to see more of the face beneath.
It came away surprisingly easily around where my bullet had struck, and in just a few moments I’d managed to expose the entire left side of the face and upper neck, and with every piece removed I could see more and more of what was clearly Ariel’s face. It was slightly raw looking and swollen, but it was unmistakably her, even her lips, ear and jawline.
I tried to prize more of the hard shell away from the other side of her face, but it was still too solid.
The other two teams arrived while I was working on the creature, and as a group they gather around as I tried to remove more of shell and failed, many of them murmuring uneasily as I did so.
Eventually the Sergeant from one the teams voiced a question.
‘Is that what these things are like on the inside Mr Hall?’ He asked, clearly concerned. ‘Is this just something they wear?’
‘No sergeant, we’ve killed these things hundreds of times, and we regularly bring the dead aboard to try and learn as much as we can by examining them, and I can tell with certainty, this is not normal.’
Shelby surprised me then, by kneeling down and putting his fingers on an exposed bit of Ariel’s neck.
‘I think it’s still alive, I can feel a faint pulse.’ He said to everyone’s astonishment.
How the thing or Ariel could still be alive after all the damage we’d inflicted I couldn’t imagine, but as we sent another man out to send another update to Platt and Jenkins and request a second ambulance for the creature, there was still a part of me that was beginning to wonder whether the thing before us might actually some vestige of Ariel’s mind as well as part of her face.
‘We’d best get this thing tied up and ready for transport,’ I declared to the slightly shocked group of police officers. ‘Just in case.’
There were a lot of doubtful looks amongst the group as we used a combination of handcuffs and odd bits of rope we found lying around the warehouse to secure the creature.
Just as we were finishing though the first of the runners returned.
‘The other’s,’ he began, clearly flustered and out of breath. ‘The other search teams, they found a creature as well, and it’s attacked them. There are men seriously hurt.’
All three of the search teams that had come out to support us as we tracked the creature were in the warehouse by this point, and on hearing this news they were all eager to go and help, but with Riley down and the half dead creature at our feet, we clearly couldn’t all go, so we quickly decided amongst themselves that two teams would go back to the vehicles in order to go and support our comrades that were coming under attack.
Before they went though, one of the team leaders turned back to me.
‘Mr Hall, I know you probably want to stay with the creature we have here, but we could sure do with your help if you’ll come.’
I kicked myself for being so pre-occupied and not having offered when the runner had first delivered his report, and immediately stood to go with them.
As had become clear when we’d first encountered one of these creatures the previous night, the scopes which I’d put together for the search teams were a poor substitute for a proper lensing rig in the hands of an experienced lensman. Just watching Blake try to swap the small telescope type device from one hand to the other in order to be able to draw his gun had shown that. But the more I worked with them, the more I’d realised that in addition to fact that they were clumsy to use, they also offered too narrow a field of vision which made it difficult to use the scopes to scan wide areas, or to follow fast moving targets, so much so that Blake after a while had just pocketed the scope he’d got until I spotted something and could direct his attention to a specific area.
We were at the cars in no-time and speeding through the late afternoon light to the last known location of the other search teams within minutes. As we travelled I heard over the radio that the ambulances had turned up at the boat yard and both Riley and the creature were on their way to a nearby hospital. The creature still under heavy guard.
We also heard more disturbing news from the other search teams. Apparently the creature had not only evaded them, it had also started to hunt them, and had already taken out one of the radio cars with its driver, along with several members of the team that had discovered it or tried to head it off.
Apparently the hunters had become the hunted.
CHAPTER 18 – HUNTER
As we sped through the streets, it was Platt who came onto the radio to inform us that the second creature had initially been tracked to an old packing plant on the south shore of Long Island, only a few miles away from where we’d discovered the first creature in the boatyard. The packing plant was located in a largely industrial area that also contained one of the city’s big waste-water processing works as well as a large railway maintenance yard for the underground and elevated train lines.
