Ghoul Britannia

By: Glynn Barrass
September 8, 2008

“Welcome to the final meeting of the Weyland Academy Council of War!” The man saying this, like those at the table around him, sat disheveled and unshaven, his eyes hollow from lack of sleep. Once the Math Professor of the Weyland Academy for Boys, he was now one of only four surviving adults of a devastating attack that had decimated the academy and (the) rest of the British Isles in its entirety.

From the coast of Devon to John O’Groats, the United Kingdom of 1861 had become infested by a murderous army of monsters. The Towns and Cities were now the abodes of the damned, filled with the rotten carcasses of the dead and the few pitiful survivors of an onslaught that had been as bloody as it had been relentless. The nation’s capital, now a huge necropolis, was surrounded by killing fields ripe with corpses.

Very few souls were aware of the cause of the disaster, certainly not the beleaguered Queen Victoria, bunkered up in one of her abodes in the west of England; and certainly not the Prime Minister or anyone else with any kind of nebulous authority in a nation which was now well and truly the domain of monsters. Those that did know of the original, quite innocuous event that had sparked the Armageddon kept it mostly to themselves. For in June of that year, a bare month after the first hostilities of the American Civil War had begun, the explorer Charles Enderwick brought back to England a tiny memento that he’d unearthed in a sand sunken temple in the Sahara Desert, soon unleashing a horror a million times worse than what was to come in America’s terrible, continent-wide war.

The object that he’d discovered had been a small, carven effigy of a lion’s head, painted red and roughly the size of a tangerine with a mane of twisted snakes surrounding its snarling visage. As his antiquated occult book had instructed, he’d innocently cracked open the icon to reveal the supposed secret within. But, instead of revealing anything of value, the icon’s annihilation had released a seed of destruction that had swiftly, as if by some infernal magic, caused a million impossible monsters to appear and start ravening throughout the nation. Enderwick had been the first to fall, torn to shreds by a gigantic, full-bodied version of the miniature he’d demolished.

He had been only one of millions to die.

One of his correspondents, Howard Denton, the Geography Master at Weyland Academy, knew the truth of what had occurred, for he had shared the other’s interest in archaeology and the occult. The secluded academy, a rectangular edifice of brown brick surrounded by naught but countryside for miles around, had suffered heavily from Enderwick’s naive dabbling.

The school had held almost a hundred boys, twenty members of domestic staff and twelve Masters when the monsters had struck, a mere eighteen of them having made it to the attic whilst the evil creatures rampaged throughout the halls and classrooms, killing and devouring all they’d found. Hours later, Denton had tentatively crept down the stairs to discover the academy utterly devoid of the beasts that had attacked with such brutal ferocity. Following this, the other two surviving Masters had joined him in a search that had found many dead but precious few survivors. Out of these, only the Sports Master, Shiflet, had survived his injuries. They’d cleared the dead away as best they could before allowing their frightened charges back into the school proper.

Finding his jocular comment greeted by silence, Angstrom continued, “Alright then, not war, but a council of resistance.”

“Whatever you call it, I feel the conqueror worm not far from our heels.” The English master said this, his face stern and wrinkled in the fading afternoon light.

The room surrounding the three men and one boy reaching manhood, had once been a chemistry laboratory, its glass fronted wall cabinets and desks still filled with instruments and chemicals gone dusty from misuse. The scarred wooden table they sat around had seen much use in the weeks since their plans to thwart the invasion had begun, and was covered in maps, books and two glowing oil lanterns providing warmth and light in contrast to the cold, dismal day beyond the windows.

Despite the jokes the Math Professor made, it was a war meeting, a meeting that could spell the end of the monsters reign over Great Britain if everything went according to plan. Overseeing the meeting and seated at the far end of the table, sat Howard Denton, quite possibly, apart from those seated around him, one of the only souls in the entire Country that knew what had caused so much terror and death since Enderwick’s terrible mistake.

Angstrom, and Peabody the English Master shared the secret, as did Augustus, the academy’s head boy.

“I’m still not happy about any of the boys assisting us with this,” Peabody said, his frail hands held over the nearest lamp. He was the eldest of the four, his unshaven face showing pure white.

“Hear, hear,” added Angstrom, but Augustus was quick to interrupt.

“It’s their future too Sir,” he said, “And I couldn’t stop them helping us if I tried.”

In the weeks since the disaster had struck, both man and child had become equals; their survival of the monsters assault steeling them all, no matter how young or old, to the new world of terror that existed beyond the academy’s grounds.

“Well, any boys that don’t want to be involved should be kept safe in the attic is all that I’m saying.” Peabody added testily. The loss of the pupils at the beginning of the disaster still weighed on him heavily.

Angstrom coughed, then, “I still say we do this: burn our esteemed magus and his books at the stake, and then hide in the chapel and pray for God to intervene.”

“We’d starve to death whilst waiting for (Him) to help us.” Augustus said, his voice filled of sarcasm.

“Well,” Angstrom added as an afterthought, “We’d have to eat some of the larger boys.”

The rest of the group laughed at this tasteless joke, then Denton, their ‘magus,’ harrumphed and they all quieted down. As well as being surrounded by books, Denton had before him a long silver object, laid atop a white cloth. The silver implement was sharp at one end and embossed with scores of barely visible signs and sigils. From the instructions he’d read from his books, he’d forged this tool that by all accounts might well end the terror in one fell swoop.

“We will need as many hands as possible when the thing gets here,” he said. “ And to hold back any more that may try and breach the defenses whilst we destroy the beast.” Denton pointed towards the silver spike, adding, “This may well be a one chance only affair, at least for us anyway.”

They had decided that before their plan was initiated, many of Denton’s books and notes would be bundled together and put in safe storage to safeguard in case everything went awry. A survivor, in the event of failure, would then transport them to whatever remnants of civilization could be found.

A dark cloud fell over them for a moment, interrupted by a knocking at one of the laboratory doors. It opened to reveal one of the younger boys; he entered face mucky with the sleeve of his tunic hanging from its seams. He held a piece of paper in one hand and a large wood axe in the other, holding it over his shoulder like a man on parade. Walking to Augustus, he passed him the note before saluting, his face stern and unmoving. It looked comical but no one laughed. The boy departed the room like he’d completed a mission of great importance, quietly closing the door behind him. The message he’d brought (was) of great importance, it being an inventory of weapons that Shiflet had drawn together.

Augustus read it quickly before looking round at the others.

“So… is it good news or bad?” Peabody tentatively asked.

Augustus licked his lips, his face displaying indecision. “Well… we have eight javelins, three axes, lots of sticks and two shotguns.” He stared round at the others, awaiting a reaction, before adding. “And fire, we can hurt them with fire right?”

“Fuck and bollocks!” Angstrom exclaimed, his foul words making Augustus’s face turn bright red. “Those monsters out there are virtually indestructible!” He grabbed the note from Augustus, reading through it before adding. “We need more time.”

“Now, you’re just wrong on both counts,” Peabody said, gritting his teeth in anger. “A cannon can kill one, I’m sure of it, and the group of refugees that came by said they’d found a dead beast on their way here.” He turned to Denton, saying, “And the time is as good as any. Right man?”

Denton picked up and examined the spike, quiet for a moment before answering.

“According to what I have read.” He put the spike down carefully, removing one of the books from the pile to his left, “With the correct know-how, the beasts from beyond should vanish just as easily as they were summoned.” Opening the tome, he leafed through its musty pages, making small clouds of dust appear around his hands.

“It still sounds like so much heathen magic to me,” Peabody muttered, staring back into his lamp.

Denton replied eyes squinted as he read through the page’s small, faded words. “Magic? It only appears as such because our own science hasn’t caught up with the science this book describes.”

The Math Professor interjected. “Tiny particles of matter, completely invisible to our eyes, floating around harmlessly until that Enderwick’s meddling made them come together and spring to life!” Angstrom shook his head. “I wouldn’t believe it possible if I had not seen it myself!”

He, like Denton and a few of the boys, had witnessed some of the creatures appear on the academy’s grounds, seemingly from thin air and swiftly joined by more of the same, charging in from beyond its fenced boundaries.

Continuing, Denton said. “Certain intelligences, according to this book, lived on the Earth before our species and warred with others of their kind, one side winning and banishing the other’s foot soldiers to some kind of living oblivion, dissipated around the ether for years uncounted.”

“It would explain why they’re so vicious,” Augustus said, “Trapped for all that time in pieces around us.”

“From what I understand, the soldiers were created in such a manner because they were very difficult to control, even by their creators. But the other side discovered the method of banishment, and won the war soon after.”

Peabody interrupted Denton with a raised hand, the tutor turned pupil. “I still don’t understand who these intelligences were, what they fought over, or if the victor’s were on the side of good?”

“I hope they were, considering what the enemy soldiers look like.” Augustus added.

Denton closed the book, again picking up the silver object. “The books seem to hint that they battled over the planet itself; but, as to whether they were like us, what form they took, or what their motivations were, they are unclear.”

Peabody went to say something else but Denton stopped him with a wave of his hand. The older man had never had much time for the junior Master before the monsters had decimated England; he now respected him and his occult studies greatly.

“What I do know is that the scholars that learned and wrote these secrets down also learned how to banish the enemy.” Denton pointed to the spike meaningfully. “And if we can lure one of them here, and ambush it into submission, this tool will dispel it and the rest of that terrible army as swiftly as it was summoned.”



***



In a night leading to early morning, Denton stood at a third floor window staring down at the grounds around the academy building, Angstrom by his side. Beyond their gaze lay the fence surrounding their home and once workplace, and beyond this the fields and forests, all shrouded in darkness. The moon lay hidden, the stars tiny and distant beyond the odd and interminable cloud breaks. They’d been stood there for some hours now, the other Masters and boys hidden away asleep in the attic. It seemed the safest place to be at night.

“What you said earlier, about dispelling the creatures?” Angstrom’s earlier good humor had dissipated the closer it came to instigating Denton’s plan; his voice sounded subdued and sullen. “It still seems so unreal, despite what you’ve told us.”

Denton quickly realized that the man was fishing for support; he did his best to reciprocate.

“I know what you mean, but the science utilized, however mysterious to us now, seemed at least sound when Enderwick summoned them.”

“Did you ever discover what led up to his actually unleashing the beasts? Or, for that matter, why he did it?”

Shaking his head, Denton sighed before continuing. “I think he read the same books I have with a little too much salt pinched between his fingers, and thought that he could summon one under his control. His curiosity was our undoing. I’m just wondering though, if this plan does work, what we’ll do afterwards?”

Now it was Denton’s turn for comfort, Angstrom realizing this and finally finding the opportunity to smile.

“We rebuild, young man,” he said, patting Denton on the shoulder, “We kick those horrible devils up the arse and retake the country!”



***



Neither man managed much sleep that night, nor did many of the others. They were all up at the crack of dawn, and after eating what would quite possibly be the final breakfast of their lives, went about the preparations to ensnare and destroy one of the monsters from beyond.

The plan began with some of the boys and Augustus setting themselves up outside the academy with weapons in preparation to attack the creature Denton would summon. Along with a thick morning mist, the fence around the academy, dotted with small trees and shrubbery, held them concealed well, twigs and leaves attached to their clothing for extra camouflage.

Their mission was to try and damage the creature as it headed towards the laboratory where Denton waited with the silver spike, ready to plunge it into the beast’s heart and end the horrors in one fell swoop. Other ‘troops’ were waiting to ambush the monster within the academy proper, including the other Masters and surprisingly but thankfully, all the other pupils. The terrors they’d experienced had prematurely turned them all into men, soon to be heroes in the fight for their lives and the future of Great Britain.

Whistles would be utilized to accomplish communication between the warriors, Denton standing alone in the laboratory with his own whistle hooked around his neck whilst he silently read the ritual that would supposedly draw one of the beasts towards him.

Despite the fear of being alone, he truly felt that he needed to remain as such because a part of the ritual was quite embarrassing to his sensibilities. The gibberish words he’d have to speak weren’t the problem; but pouring a mixture of his own blood and semen onto the small, lion-headed effigy he’d molded from clay made him feel not a little uncomfortable despite the ramifications if it worked.

Taking one final look beyond the window, the scene below still thankfully draped with mist and obscuring from his eyes the soldiers hidden around the academy’s inner landscape, he put the whistle to his mouth and emitted three shrill bursts, his signal that the ritual was about to begin.

Stepping towards the table he removed from his pockets both the vial of bodily fluids and the clay icon before placing them before the book’s page of summoning. Lifting the bottle of milky pink liquid, he stared at it with distaste as he intoned the words of power from the yellow pages before him. Not wanting to make one single mistake, he read it slowly and clearly.

“Abthoth, cula tebroth, sinqed dus.”

Denton repeated the sentence three times before opening and pouring the vial onto the clay image; to his surprise the liquid started to hiss like acid as it began to melt through the clay.

A few more gibberish words and it was all over. Sitting on a stool he removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a brow that had become beaded with sweat. The lump that’d been forming in his throat since the night before now seemed almost chokingly huge. As he waited, the silence beyond the laboratory seemed thick with hidden menace, the seconds turning to minutes before a shrill whistle from beyond the window made him head quickly towards the glass. Still, all seemed dull and quiet without.

Then he heard the roar, an ugly, screaming sound that no creature of Mother Nature’s design could ever possibly produce.

Seeing a dark shape charging through the gates, he stepped back from the window feeling abject panic grow within him. It came in the form of a huge, lumbering quadruped, jet black and oily against the backdrop of mist. Cutting through the fog, the monstrosity spread the mist like water in shallows; even from a distance he could discern that its ugly, squirming head was that of one of the ferocious medusa lions.

Another whistle and a wave of javelins flew through the air above the creature, most missing but four burying deeply into the monster’s greasy flank. Denton sighed with relief as without pause the creature continued its charge towards the building; his vain hope being that there would be no causalities taken from within his team of intrepid heroes.

More projectiles flew from the fog as the beast made its way towards the academy, jars of explosive concoctions the Masters had mixed in the lab behind him, designed to worry and burn their invader’s hide.

Unfortunately, most of these fell short, exploding around the creature and dispersing the fog in a firework display of flames and smoke; one hit the creature on its shoulders though, setting it aflame as it rushed towards the very room he waited in.

Denton felt decidedly sick at the prospect.

A minute after the monster had disappeared from view Angstrom came charging into the room, two short whistles then issuing from outside before a loud crack of thunder informed him that one of the shotguns had been discharged.

The man was panting and grinning, bearing a shotgun in his hands.

“It’s one of the big black bitches!” He said between gasps, his foul mouth seemingly enhanced in the face of terror. “Coming right our way just like your blasted book said it would! It’s breaking down the barriers downstairs right now.” Angstrom then settled himself down; going to his knees beside the door with the shotgun pointed squarely into the corridor beyond. Circling the table, Denton crossed the room to join him; the silver spike, tucked into his belt like a dagger, retrieved and held like one as he stood before the open doorway.

He asked, “Have you seen what state it’s in?” when another whistle issued from outside. Denton ran to the window with Angstrom close at his heels.

“Aw, damned it all!” Angstrom moaned, as they perceived what the whistle had indicated. Two more monsters, another of the lion-things and something tall and tree-like covered in huge white eyes, were stalking the grounds towards the academy.

Angstrom shuffled on his feet, his excitement turning frantic. “Did you know your spell would bring more than one of them?”

Shaking his head, Denton watched the monsters progress feeling his despair grow at every grisly step they took. Whatever ammunition those outside had once possessed, had obviously been used up in the first attack.

Then, the two men saw a small shape charging out from the mist towards the monsters. It was the blonde haired form of Augustus, a javelin raised above his head and his mouth wide open in a war cry nearly nulled by the mist.

“What on Earth is he up to?” Angstrom sounded puzzled and disturbed.

Denton’s reply was grim and sure. “The brave fool is trying to buy us some time.”

Whatever brave intentions the boy had had were soon quashed as the tree-thing noticed his approach and turned to leap on him with tendrils outstretched. His death was a sickening sight, Denton turning away in horror just before a new sound caught his attention from the corridor beyond the laboratory.

For a moment he stood frozen, quite sure that the first monster was upon them, but the sounds quickly turned into the footsteps of what was obviously a human being. Running back to the doorway, Angstrom almost bumped into the staggering form of Peabody as he slumped into the laboratory. The man, his face and chest bloody and gouged, was in quite a state.

Angstrom took hold of him, holding the man up with his gun and a steady hand. The other looked as tattered and as ungainly as a scarecrow; blood dribbled down his mouth as he spoke.

“Shiflet has fallen, and two of the boys. The beast is coming.”

And at this Peabody expired, falling so heavily that Angstrom had to just let his lifeless form drop to the floor. He turned to Denton with a panicked look, but there was no more time for words as an ungodly roar filled the corridor, followed by the loud scrambling of terrible feet.

Peabody’s dying prophecy had come true.

Angstrom quickly dropped to his knees, even finding time to close his dead colleague’s eyelids before raising the gun to the doorway. Denton stood frozen with grim anticipation as a cacophony of jarringly close sounds proved that the monster was indeed upon them.

Another roar and a devilish face filled the doorway, a snarling, jet black leonine face surrounded by a swath of hissing, weaving snakes. It sneered at him with an evil so unparalleled that he felt like pissing himself with fear. Then Angstrom discharged the shotgun and a roar almost as loud as the monster’s filled the room, followed by fire and smoke and the stink of gunpowder. An instant later the smoke cloud dissipated, revealing the lion-faced creature with half of its face missing, turned now to red and black mince surrounded by a group of limp and ragged snakes.

Denton raised the spike, seeing Angstrom scrabble backwards as the monster squeezed itself through the doorway, its shoulders smoldering from its encounter with the explosives and an array of half-broken javelins still protruding from its back.

Staggering forward a few steps, huge and ungainly in the confines between the walls and the laboratory table, it stopped, growled once, and then slumped down atop Peabody’s corpse.

It quivered and fell still, motionless and dead.

“We’ve failed,” Denton cried to Angstrom’s crouched form, his voice filled with despair. “This could only work whilst the beast was still living.”

“Damn it all!” Said Angstrom, pulling himself from the floor using the gun as leverage. They stood staring at the creature’s still form, the remains of its snake-formed mane twitching and hissing meekly before falling limp. Black ichor poured steadily from the place where it’d been shot, puddling around its muzzle to spread across the floor in a dank, obsidian pool.

The failure Denton had worded filled his heart and soul, permeating the room around him as he stared at the huge, uncanny head of the monster that they’d dispatched far too soon. The question of where the other approaching beasts were, and whether or not he’d have the opportunity to attack them with the spike, briefly gave him a second of hope. Then something quite unbelievable started happening.

The beast, slowly and unsteadily, began to rise; its head was still limp and its mane hung lifeless, but still it moved.

Denton saw Angstrom looking from him to the beast with an expression of questioning awe, Denton himself now beginning to feel the glimmerings of hope that all was not lost after all. Then more movement and a foul noise from the reanimated beast, but not a growl or a hiss but a sound not unlike aged leather being split.

The rip began at the center of its chin, tearing down its underside with a terrible crackling noise, a huge gash appearing and spilling blood and organs to steam foully to the floor. And what Denton had assumed to be a large conglomeration of the creature’s grisly insides, now began to shudder and wriggle towards him, shaking away its slimy afterbirth to climb up onto two long, sinewy arms and powerful but short legs. It was in fact a black-furred, bipedal, wolf-headed thing that snarled and spat with horrifying malice.

Angstrom stood speechless, Denton too, but as it roared, revealing rows of razor sharp, yellowed fangs, his resolve finally departed and he backed away on shaking legs towards the rear of the laboratory.

“Christ almighty, the others are coming,” he heard Angstrom say through a daze of fear. Turning and running towards the small confines of the laboratory’s storage room, Denton’s only plan was to crawl away somewhere and hide, an idea quickly thwarted as something heavy and foul smelling charged into him, knocking him to the floor. As he fell, he barely managed to avoid smacking his head against the floor, the silver spike falling from his grip as his elbows smacked against the tiles causing sharps pains of agony to spread up into his hands and shoulders. This was followed by a rough wrenching from clawed hands as the thing the lion had birthed twisted him round onto his back, drool and gooey afterbirth pouring down onto his face as the gamy-smelling beast stared down at him, its thick legs straddling his own.

A scream of terror issued from the lab beyond the beast’s back; as it gripped his shoulders with painful force, its wolf-like face formed a smile, its obsidian eyes filled with maleficent glee.

He stared straight into the pits of Hell, the words coming from its mouth choking him nearly as much as its foul breath. They were in clipped and perfect English.

“I’ve been taught to devour for all eternity, and it feels (oh so good!)” It was the voice of Charles Enderwick, just as Denton remembered it. “Just as they’ll teach (you!)” It tittered and growled, its voice growing deeper as it pressed down onto his struggling form. Then its vicious jaws snapped down towards him and he squeezed his eyes shut in preparation for death.

Darkness.

A moment later and he discovered the weight of the monster gone. He opened his eyes to find the bleeding, tatty shape of Angstrom, holding the silver spike in his hand, crouched over him in its place. The Math Professor turned savior held his other hand out, smiling at the shocked surprise on his comrade’s face.

“You know, if the Queen’s not been eaten, I may well be in line for a knighthood!”

Denton took the other’s hand, pulling himself up before wiping the gore from his mouth with his coat sleeve. Grinning hugely, Angstrom continued, “I might even put a good word in for you!”

Both started laughing and the sound was beautiful to their ears.