#meet eccentric artist hiding the Self behind stories

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[tvmigraine]

FORGOTTEN LIVES: Philip Hinchcliffe (Plus Kara Dennison Interview)

Before we begin! Remember to get a copy of the Forgotten Lives Omnibus at this link! I've been busy so you've only got five days to purchase a copy, get yourself one before you miss out!

For this section, for once, I'll be keeping it brief - there's little I want to say on this Doctor as they feel much easier to give across to an audience. Philip Hinchcliffe (1944) needs no introduction to a Classic Who fan, having led the show from The Ark in Space to the more controversial Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Whether intentional or not, there is a reflection in this Doctor's era to the 4th Doctor portrayed by Tom Baker. This eccentric incarnation hides a serious and powerful side behind his bravado and swashbuckler personality, with a combative companion that he's trying to teach to be better a la Leela. Rue makes a grand introduction with "Gauntlet of Absolution" and, currently, is the Hinchcliffe Doctor's only companion which brings up an interesting point. For the most part, each Doctor either has one companion established or mostly adventures on their own. This Doctor falls into that category, but I feel that he isn't the type to take another companion. Where he's building this relationship with Rue, he's also seemingly seeking validation from her in these travels.

Where we have yet to see the definitive finale for Hinchcliffe's Doctor, we see what could be coming. The original art by Paul Hanley lists that this Doctor meets a premature end at the hands of a villain called "The Witch of the White House", a character we see the origins of in the second story. Although the character has yet to be seen through fully, I personally interpret this character to live a lot like the 10th Doctor in that they burn bright but fast. While there's no announcement about any future plans, it would be interesting to see the relationship between these three core characters - the Doctor, the Witch and Rue - develop in the future.

Paul Hanley's design for the Hinchcliffe Doctor's TARDIS is up there in my personal taste, but that's for a good reason - how it references Hinchcliffe's era of the show. During Season 14 of the show (Hinchcliffe's final season as producer), Tom Baker spent that time using the secondary control room as opposed to the usual. Here, Paul Hanley builds a history behind this by making it the main console room for Hinchcliffe's Doctor, giving this interior more history by tying it into its own stories. In a meta way, it keeps a connection between Hinchcliffe and Baker's era even here.

Now that we've covered everything I intended to, let's get to the main chunk of this post - I had the opportunity to interview @the-last-teabender about her Doctor. To give more of an idea of Kara Dennison's work, she's in charge of Altrix Books alongside Paul Driscoll (a name we'll see again with the Gallaccio Doctor) who have released their own charity novels like Master Pieces and Master Switches, both focusing on the Doctor's oldest friend/enemy. She's also working on a series called Owl's Flower, alongside artist Ginger Hoesly.

I tried to keep it in the same vein as the self conducted interviews for Forgotten Lives by focusing on five questions. Read below!

You've written two stories for Hinchcliffe now, "The Gauntlet of Absolution" and "The Demons of Dog Street", and I would personally say that this Doctor does feel somewhat cut from the same cloth as the Tom Baker 4th Doctor. Would you say that his era influenced either story at all when it came to writing for this incarnation? While it wasn't something I intentionally sought out, I'm sure that came into play subconsciously. Everything we experience becomes part of our inspiration, and Tom Baker really is the definitive "Classic Doctor." The comparisons I've seen between Leela and Rue are apt, and Leela is a favorite companion - so as much as I made sure to separate Rue where I could, I can definitely see the broader similarities between the two TARDIS teams. When I've described this Doctor through the lens of other Doctors, 4 has never figured in, but perhaps he should. I tend to describe the Hinchcliffe Doctor as having the humility of 6 and the poise of 11. But again, that's on the outside. If anything, I'm flattered that people see my Doctor and think of someone so iconic and beloved!

In the first interview you gave with Forgotten Lives' page, you mentioned wanting to approach the prehistory from a literary and stylistic angle. Was there any stories or authors that influenced you when finding that style? You did mention the era this hypothetically would've been released was during the revival of sword-and-planet fiction. When I was first asked about being in Forgotten Lives, I'd just finished Renegade Swords, a sword-and-sorcery anthology curated by D.M. Ritzlin. It was the first book I featured during my tenure as book reviewer for Sci Fi Magazine before the mag folded, and it's an excellent introduction to the genre and its many offshoots. Bryce Walton's sword-and-planet story "Princess of Chaos" (which you can find in Renegade Swords or on Project Gutenberg) spurred a lot of the central concept of "Gauntlet of Absolution." In terms of overarching atmosphere, Edgar Rice Burroughs and his John Carter novels were a natural go-to. I wanted to give the sense that this Doctor's adventures played out in pulp sci-fi magazines. The kind with the big illustration on the first two pages. Hence the blurb at the beginning of each story.

You have taken part in other stories for Obverse before, such as City of the Saved and Iris Wildthyme, along with your own works at Altrix Books alongside Paul Driscoll. Does working on this Doctor feel different to how you'd work on other stories? Are there any similarities you've noticed? So far, my stories have either been fully in my own universe or fully in someone else's. Both of which are unique experiences in themselves. I love creating a character from the ground up; at the same time, I love studying, say, Katy Manning's dialogue as Iris and seeing how well I can "impersonate" her in text. Both are great challenges. With the Doctor, it was a sort of in-between experience. Creating a Doctor doesn't fall into one camp or the other. You're working off a template, but you're also not. You're making your own character, but they still have to have those touchstones that make them the Doctor, and people have extremely strong opinions about what those touchstones are. It was a little scary to think about - I dreaded hearing "He's all right, but he's not really the Doctor, is he?" In the end, I was a bit Mel Brooks about it: I wrote something that I knew my friends and I would enjoy, and hoped that would get me there. Judging by the response, it seems to have done the trick, for which I'm very grateful.

Some authors, when returning to Forgotten Lives 2, chose to write a definitive end to their Doctors that leads into the next era. I was curious if the temptation to do that was there when you were planning ahead? Or if you've considered how this Doctor might meet their final story? Funnily enough, the original pitch for FL2 was actually to write their regenerations! As is the case in publishing, that changed as the scope of the anthology changed. And with the addition of more writers (and possibly the realization that the idea has legs), we were invited to write the regeneration if we wanted, but we weren't under any obligation to. I know exactly how this Doctor will go out, and there are pieces already in place. But even though writing the regeneration wouldn't necessarily mean I could never write the character again, I didn't feel ready to go there. I had a lot of pieces I wanted to lay out first. "Demons of Dog Street" is one of those pieces. Whether the others will ever see the light of day is anyone's guess, but I hope so. Suffice to say, I have the whole scenario planned out in my mind, and I think it's the sort of heroic and cool end this Doctor would refuse to admit he's hoping for.

You've obviously worked with the Hinchcliffe Doctor, stepping into Doctors outside of the main canon most people know. Are there any other Doctors that you've wanted to write for? (Things like the Cushing, Unbound, Shalka, any other Doctor out there, etc) I love what Obverse is doing with the Cushing Doctor and hope to be a part of that someday. (I'm sure I'm not the only one!) It's funny you mention the Shalka Doctor, as I actually wrote a Shalka Doctor story for a charity anthology quite a while back. My writing has evolved a lot since then, but for what it was at the time, I'm still rather fond of it. Frankly, I'd consider it a treat to get to write for any Doctor from any period - especially the process of finding their voice for myself. One day, I'd love to see the Forgotten Lives writers trade Doctors and see what comes of it! The Hinchcliffe Doctor's portions of "Retrogenesis" and "The Hive Minders" were so fun to read, because there's something about seeing someone else get your character Just Right. It would be a lot of fun to trade off Doctors within the group and see what we make of each other's work.

You can find more information on what went into Building the Doctor at Kara Dennison's blog. For more insight into the creative process of every author that worked on Forgotten Lives, you can go to @forgottenlivesobverse and find interviews from everyone involved across the books. If you're looking for insight on how the outfits were designed, you can go to Paul Hanley's Patreon and find what went into designing each Doctor.

The adventures of the Hinchcliffe Doctor and Rue start with Gaunlet of Absolution, continuing as we see below - we'll discuss The Hive Minders in the future, but look forward to these stories.

GAUNTLET OF ABSOLUTION by Kara Dennison

THE DEMONS OF DOG STREET by Kara Dennison

RETROGENESIS (Part Four) by Philip Purser-Hallard

THE HIVE MINDERS (Part One) by Ian McIntre

Tomorrow we'll pass the halfway mark and cover the Douglas Camfield Doctor, the only Doctor to make a further appearance in Doctor Who canon.

[gigsoupmusic]

INTERVIEW - MICKO WESTMORELAND ON 'VELVET GOLDMINE' AND LIFE WITH THE MELLOTRONICS

Micko Westmoreland first came to the public's attention as the enigmatic Jack Fairey in the star-studded glam rock fake biopic 'Velvet Goldmine', and since then has done everything from making electronica as The Bowling Green to the sharp edged new wave of his current project Micko & The Mellotronics. With that band on the verge of releasing their second single, a double A-side with the timely 'Noisy Neighbours 'and 'You Killed My Father' (featuring the late Neil Innes), he spoke to Gigsoup to tell all... Starting at the beginning, you got your first break appearing in the film ‘Velvet Goldmine’…  Quite a baptism of fire! Yep, I was fresh out of film school with little acting experience. So I did a ton of research, suspended all activities other than glam rock ones; late mornings, blurry eyeliner, became a kind of ‘Our Lady of the Flowers’, to quote Jean Genet. I did appear on set however with well prepared sleeve notes. Ziggy/Hunky and early Roxy had been teenage territory. Toni Colette really helped me during filming, showing me where and how to move and stand in frame etc. which I really wasn’t aware of and she was such a wonderful person to hang out with. Ewan McGregor was enormous in the 90s but treated you like a complete equal. I’ve acted the fiction of being a sensational rock star, my embalmed alter ego is now moth balled and hermetically sealed for posterity. What do you make of the film’s recent re-appraisal – it was panned at the time but now it’s considered a cult classic A lot of the film heavyweights liked it at the time and have consistently sung its praises over the last 20 years, which has contributed to its legacy, plus Todd Haynes is now seen as a 24-carat auteur. 1998 wasn’t ready for a kaleidoscopic pansexual odyssey. Velvet Goldmine truly tapped into a teenage hormonal feeling, so the audience is responsible for its longevity I think, people have grown old with it and new fans have discovered it. You had quite a lot of success making electronic music as The Bowling Green but then switched tack to making more song-based stuff.  What’s the story there? The music I was making was becoming increasingly filmic, so I moved into movie sound tracks for a while and did two film scores and a few documentaries with my brother; acclaimed director Wash Westmoreland (Still Alice, Colette). One of them, Echo Park L.A., won best drama at Sundance in 2006! I was becoming more attuned to a literary narrative and was listening to Dylan’s Time out of Mind and Beck’s Sea Change at the time – couple that with improvements in technology that weren’t so reliant on sampler and keyboard. I started playing much more guitar again, my first love and now my primary instrument for writing. You made a couple of albums under your own name but then formed Micko & The Mellotronics – your first ‘band’ project.  What was the thinking behind that move? I was very much used to working on my own. I made a couple of solo albums, one which Terry Edwards (P.J. Harvey/Holy Holy) released on his Sartorial label called ‘Wax & Wayne’, and ‘Yours Etc Abc’, on my own Landline records imprint, which I believe was the main unconscious projection into putting a live act together. The person doing PR for it asked, ‘Who’s in the band?’ When I realized I didn’t have one, it made sense to look for folk to start pushing sounds around. How would you sum up the band to someone you hadn’t heard you before?  Can you name us a few bands that have influenced its sound? We get compared to the Buzzcocks quite a lot, I’ll take that. I’ve loved Magazine since teenage, Television too. I also dig Serge Gainsbourg majorly and bands like The Silver Apples. I’m really into Iso Tomita, the 70’s electronic musician and of course Mr. Eno too. People have commented that the double A side, soon to be released, is like early Genesis but I think it’s much closer to The Rutles. Patrick from R.O.C. said there was violence to the sound. I do pride the writing on an intricacy and eccentricity but without getting prog about it. Talk us through the Mellotronics members and their individual flavours... Nick Mackay a friend referred me to. He was playing in a two-piece called ‘Barricades’, and was clearly a very good drummer, real flare as a player/performer and had the magic ingredient for any band – he was a thoroughly decent chap you could spend a ton of time with. Jon Klein is our very own rock star hiding in plain sight. He has a CV better than the rest of us put together: Banshees, Sinead O’Connor to name a few and of course his own band Specimen. I lent Jon my amp when we were on the same bill. I gave him a copy of my previous album and he contacted me the next day, which I considered a big thumbs up. He’s very quick, obscenely talented and has revolutionized day-to-day working practice. In short a turbo charged V12 engine has been carefully placed inside a Hillman imp, with fresh brake pads added. Vicky Carroll the bassist also came through personal referral, Haydn Hades who does stand up. At the time she was playing in a band the ‘Owls of Now’, a very bright lady indeed. She really got what the band was about and had great style. The dynamic of now the band get on and its chemistry is essential to longevity. Having a woman on board was important to us, so we really lucked out by finding such a smart cookie in Vicky. So far, you’ve shared ‘The Finger’, your first single, and now two new tracks, which will (eventually) be released as a 7” single.  Talk us through ‘Noisy Neighbors’ and ’You Killed My Father’. Noisy Neighbours came about from my experience with dealing with serial complainers whilst living in a housing co-op. We shot the video with filmmaker Ashley Jones (www.thechaoesengineers.com) in the next door location the inhabitants of the song were occupying, so we had to be quiet. Of course some complaints are genuine but most were more telling of the complainant than complainee. There are control issues, which come about as a result of trying to micromanage your environment beyond your own four walls. I wanted to make a witty statement about that without being over critical or condemning. Raising a single eyebrow over that type of behavior. ‘You Killed My Father’, the double A side was inspired by Neil Innes R.I.P. (Monty Python, Bonzo Dog, The Rutles). So of course I was thrilled when he agreed to play on it. I was introduced to him through an artist friend Harry Pye. We inadvertly created a supergroup together called the Spammed and meet up once a year to record for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Last session Tony Visconti produced a cover of Bolan’s ‘Get it on’, for us. It comprises, Rat Scabies (The Damned), Horace Panter (The Specials), Neil when he was with us and actor/comedian Kevin Eldon on vocs, I play guitar. The song relates to my childhood, growing up in Leeds and has a Shakespearean quality. I checked the prose with an expert to make sure I hadn’t over egged the pudding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5iswf8GG6o You seem to be able to attract some interesting names to collaborate with - Horace Panter of The Specials and the late Neil Innes recently, but also members of The Blockheads, Madness, Stranglers and Goldfrapp in the past.  Who would be top of your collaborative wish list? I’d love to do something with Eno again. We became friendly during the mid nineties. I was tutored by him, whilst working on an art show called ‘Self Storage’ with Laurie Anderson but never made it into the studio. A wild card like Wendy Carlos, famed for the soundtrack of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ would be great too. Likewise, your videos have featured some interesting names from British comedy…  What do they bring to the party?  Anyone else you’d like to get on board if you had free reign? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDr7nkOQN9Q All the comedy connections came from Kevin Eldon initially, a super bright and truly wonderful guy. He introduced me to Paul Putner at a Specials gig. Paul’s a brilliant bloke and really likes the band. He found the remarkable Suzy Kane for us. All three have taken excellent roles. Suzy had a lot of input in Noisy Neighbours, suggesting wardrobe and even shots to Ashley as we were making it; we really have had tremendous fun with our contributors. Obviously, Chris Morris would be fantastic but I’m a little afraid to knock. We hear the debut M&TM album is close to completion – what have you got in store for us? A psychedelic mish mash of fable, sound collage and idea. With the new single, 3 of the songs are now out there. On a musical front Horace Panter out of The Specials has guested on a couple of tracks for us and of course we have one of Neil Innes’ last performances too. I’ve written a song about Imelda Marcos, she seemed like a person who was way ahead of her time, a modern template for a highly manipulative battle-axe. I have an author friend in his 60s who’s an eminent  psychologist, (Georg Eifert - Anxiety Happens) so I wrote a song called ‘The Fear’, with a lot of his theories in mind. There’s also one too called ‘Sick and Tired’, it’s not about what I’m eed up about, but like Noisy Neighbours it’s a comment about complaint. When writing I try to look at what gets talked about by everyday people and base some of the songs around those themes. Earwig on phone conversations on buses, pick up discarded bits of paper, when you get into the habit you’ll be amazed what you find. So I get on the 38 and set my brain to record. There’s also a fair amount about growing up on the record too, which I hope all can relate to. I think you have to start with a good idea, that’s on any level otherwise you’re unlikely to get far. From my art college days I got into the habit of noting things down, if you don’t it often escapes you. It’s difficult to marry a multitude of ingredients and let’s face it the world is full of plenty, pair it down and make it resonate. Anyone who tells you otherwise is telling porkies. To make something that stands the test of time is more difficult still. But I’m not afraid of the work and I enjoy ‘the doing’, for me that’s what it’s all about. I believe that as individuals we have a natural tendency to evolve, if we choose to see it that way and trust, it’ll ‘self fulfill’. If you’ll allow yourself to tap into that expansion creatively, you’ll always find inspiration. Micko & The Mellotronics release 'Noisy Neighbours / You Killed My Father' on Landline Records on April 17 with the 7" single schedule to hit the shops on June 27. Read the full article

[rhunterwriter-blog]

The Little Ones

In the days before the Breaking, Plymouth was considered a reasonably sized town. By more modern standards, that would have made it a fairly large city. Unfortunately, the town had suffered in the intervening decades, despite surviving the Breaking itself largely intact.

Years worth of moist air blowing in off the sea had taken its toll, and many of the homes and buildings stood broken down and decayed. The worst were those that sat abandoned for many years, the lack of maintenance often leading to rotted out frames and caved in ceilings. Constable Foster Hayden might have guessed that a full quarter of the buildings left standing weren’t safe enough to even enter any more.

The Constable walked by several such buildings on his patrol as he made his way to market row. Just because the buildings weren’t safe to enter didn’t mean that no one ever did. On the contrary, such a criminal underbelly as the town had often conducted business or laid low in the gutted structures. Where better to hide than where no sane man would go?

All and all Foster liked the little seaside town. It was just large enough to occasionally meet a stranger on the street. Not so small that absolutely everyone knew everyone else by name and on sight, and not so large as to get lost in an endless sea of faces.

As he walked through the open air market, the afternoon sun hidden behind thick clouds, Foster felt more than saw someone sidle up next to him. His hand instinctively reached for the weighted club on his belt just as the hooded figure tapped him on his shoulder.

Foster stopped abruptly and spun, hand on his cudgel, only to see the smiling face of his least intelligent cousin.

Living in a town the size of Plymouth had its downsides, one of which was having far too much extended family, some of whom were bound to be a prodigious pain in the ass. For him that pain was named Cyril, his mother’s older sister’s youngest son.

“Hey cuz, you got a sec for a drink?” Cyril asked with his usual lightheartedness.

Foster glanced up and down the street, then checked the empty doorframe of the abandoned building behind him. It wasn’t that he suspected Cyril of trying anything nefarious, he wasn’t that stupid, but the man was dense enough to make for a perfect dupe.

“For you Cyril? I have exactly one second, and no time at all for a drink,” Foster replied flatly, his eyes still scanning his surroundings.

“Come on cuz, it’s important.” The statement was delivered with more weight than Foster expected from his cousin. A rare moment of seriousness.

The Constable stood silent for a moment and calculated. Odds were that whatever Cyril had to say would be an absolute waste of time, and he had actual work to do. On the other hand, he could count at least five relatives he would be hearing from by noon tomorrow if he said no, and two of them were Foster’s own parents, regardless of the fact that he had moved out of their house and across town years ago.

“Fine Cyril, but it’ll have to be quick,” Foster finally responded.

“Fine, fine,” Cyril replied, turning and leading Foster towards a small establishment across the street.

Molly’s was more of a bar than a restaurant, and was mostly empty in the early afternoon. Nevertheless, the cheap sub-par food and large drinks served all day insured there were at least a few people in the place.

Cyril led Foster to a table against a wall, as far away from the other patrons as possible. The proprietress, Jolene, approached them from behind the bar. Cyril ordered a beer, and tried to order one for Foster as well.

“Just water for me, boiled mind. I’m still on duty Cyril,” Foster interjected, shifting his attention off of Jolene and back to his cousin. He studiously ignored the woman’s expression as she turned to walk away.

“So, what’s this all about?” he continued once he judged Jolene to be out of earshot.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

Foster shot the man across the table a hard look. He wasn’t very good at intimidating people with facial expressions, but he didn’t have to try very hard to pull off angry.

“I’m just trying to think of the fastest way to tell it!” His cousin responded, raising both of his hands defensively. Foster just sat quietly and waited for him to continue.

“I guess the best place to start would be that I’ve met someone.”

Foster almost walked away then and there. Cyril must have seen that urge on his face as well.

“It’s not like that! We’ve been together quite a while.”

“How long?” Foster asked. His cousin’s relationships were notorious for lasting days, if not hours.

“I’m not exactly sure. Two or three months?”

That surprised Foster. Cyril’s previous record had been something like two weeks.

“What happened?” Foster asked.

“She’s gone.”

Foster was standing to leave, not caring in the slightest about his cousin’s latest sob story, but at that moment Jolene returned with Cyril’s beer and his water. Foster thanked her quietly, tried to cover his reason for standing by adjusting his seat, and reached for his drink. He immediately sat it down on the table. It was literally boiling hot! How had the woman even carried the glass?!

He looked up, expecting to see Cyril well into his first drink. Instead his cousin was slouched over the glass, staring into the liquid. He had lost all of his usual flamboyance, in its place sat something like sad dejection.

“What do you mean ‘she’s gone’?” Foster asked reluctantly.

Cyril looked up at him, the Constable thought the man might have been crying if he had been sitting there alone.

“I mean she’s gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Missing. Whatever you want to call it. I can’t find her. No one knows where she is. I’ve talked to everyone, looked everywhere I can think of. I can’t find anything.”

That caught Foster’s attention, and, more importantly, was something he knew how to deal with.

“Alright, back up, who exactly are we talking about?”

Cyril sat back in his chair, his expression at least partially relieved.

“Her name is Sara. We met… It really doesn’t matter how we met. Anyway, she’s an artist. Smart, funny, charming, beautiful... way too good for a bum like me.” Cyril shook his head with a wry grin, eyes still on the table, his long dirty hair swinging in front of his face. He knew how people thought about him, Foster thought he usually took pride in it.

After a few seconds and a sip of sour beer, Cyril continued.

“Everything was going great, had been for a couple of months, then recently she started spending a lot of time with some new people.”

“Any idea who exactly? What kind of people?” Foster interjected.

Cyril shook his head again.

“No. I was trying to be supportive. Give her her space. Figured she’d tell me when she was ready. She’s an amazing person, but she can be self-conscious about the strangest things. I’m new at the whole relationship thing, but I trusted her to not keep anything really important from me.”

Foster nodded. He was sure there was more to it than Cyril was letting on, there always was when it came to things like this. For now he just waited for his cousin to continue.

“After a while she started to get reclusive. Spent less time with me and her old friends, spent more time with these new people she wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about. I tried asking her about it, told her I was worried. Me being worried turned into an argument. She stormed off and said she never wanted to see me again.”

Foster palmed his glass, trying to judge if the contents were safe to drink yet. He wanted to say that the girl was probably just avoiding him, and that Cyril should get over it, but he doubted he would be sitting here if it were that simple. For all of his cousin’s innumerable flaws, he did have his own dubious resources. More importantly, this had quickly spilled over from an annoying family matter into the purview of Foster’s actual job.

Cyril just stared at him, apparently waiting for more questions. When Foster didn’t ask any, Cyril continued.

“At first I thought she was just avoiding me. Figured she would cool off for a few hours, maybe a day, then she would come back and we could talk. After a couple of days I got in touch with some mutual friends, and they said they hadn’t heard from her either. Then I went to talk to her mother. She also said that she hadn’t seen her, but that she assumed that she had run off with me, and that she was worried because she thought that Sara might be pregnant...”

“Oh for fuck’s sake Cyril!” Foster interjected.

His cousin raised his hands in a placating gesture.

“Hey man, we were careful. But I don’t know! I just don’t know...” He trailed off, his tone quickly taking on a defeated quality.

Foster just stared at Cyril. The man’s expression and body language evoked a list of adjectives; defensive, dejected, depressed, hopeless, angry, and, above all, helpless.

“Fine, I’ll look into it. Where does her mother live?”

Foster made his way down a poorly lit street. He was flanked on either side by abandoned repair shops and warehouses, the buildings casting long shadows in the evening light, occasionally cut through by his handheld lantern as he cast it about nervously.

The street was entirely deserted, as were the buildings around him. In the old days they would have serviced the sea trade, but the structures nearer the docks had plenty of room for that these days. The ones further inland had fallen out of use decades ago.

It hadn’t taken Foster long to find Sara’s mother. He hated talking to worried or grieving family members, but he had spent almost two hours talking through her daughter’s recent changes in habit. Inez Poole had largely confirmed what Cyril had said, though she was quite predictably less keen on Sara’s and Cyril’s relationship than his cousin was.

Apparently Inez had been happy that her daughter had fallen in with a more respectable crowed, as opposed to her eccentric artist friends and dead-end boyfriend. Unfortunately, when he had pressed her for their identities she had confessed that she didn’t actually know any of them, just that Sara had told her that they were all important and respectable people.

When he had asked about her daughter’s supposed pregnancy, Inez admitted that Sara hadn’t actually told her anything about it, but insisted that she had noticed certain changes in her behavior. The first had been her diet; she had started craving a great deal more meat, and other foods that she had previously expressed a dislike for. She had also started experiencing mood swings, alternating between withdrawn silence and animated excitement. In the week before her disappearance, her mother had noted that she had started wearing looser clothing to cover a slight but apparent bulge in her stomach.

That had all sounded fairly standard to Foster, but that was more of a problem for Sara and his cousin to worry about if and when she was found.

The most useful piece of information had come after the outpouring of worry for her daughter, and various invectives leveled at Cyril.

Sara had told her mother that her new friends had helped her set up a new space to work on her art; a run down but passable studio in a previously abandoned building. At first Inez had denied knowing where it was, but as it turned out she had a nosy streak. She had followed her daughter one night, ostensibly out of concern for her safety.

Given the part of town this alleged studio was in, that wasn’t an unreasonable concern. It wasn’t a place he would have suggested anyone go alone at night. Especially not an attractive young woman. Most especially not a pregnant one.

Perhaps that line of thinking made his present actions a bit hypocritical, but he doubted anyone would attack a uniformed Constable in the middle of the street, especially before full dark. If the girl really was just avoiding his cousin and her mother, this workspace of hers was the most likely place that he knew of to find her.

Foster found the building at the end of the abandoned street and could hear the sound of water lapping against rocks nearby. When he tried the door he met with some resistance, but a good shove with his shoulder was all that was needed to force it inward.

When the light of his lantern illuminated the inside of the space he immediately stepped back and took a second look at the faded numbers over the door, then compared them with the small slip of paper where he had recorded the address.

His first thought was that Sara’s mother must have remembered it wrong. The interior wasn’t anything resembling an art studio. It was a covered dock, with two long stretches of concrete on either side of a ramp, descending into a large pool of sea water. The back wall of the structure appeared to be an oversized door, broken in places and creaking in time with the lapping of the water.

The space certainly wasn’t what Foster had been expecting, but leaving would have been a waste. Maybe there was a loft that Sara had been using, or perhaps this building allowed access to another, smaller space in one of the adjacent structures.

With those possibilities in mind, Foster stepped inside, sweeping his lantern over the bare walls and floor.

As he walked towards the ramp that lead into the water, he heard a rustling sound behind him on his left and turned towards it, sweeping the lantern light over the far corner.

The light revealed an unmoving body with its back towards him, a woman judging by the length of its hair. A dark shape covered her shoulders and head, nibbling at her face almost affectionately.

When the lantern light fell on the dark shape it reacted violently, jumping off of the body and spinning to face Foster.

The best description he could think of for the thing was a perverse combination of a squid, a spider, and a house cat.

It was a slimy blue-black in color, barely a foot long, the majority of its length made up of four long cephalopoid appendages serving as legs. It seemed to stare at him briefly, though he couldn’t discern any visible eyes. He could make out a small carnivorous beak, flanked on either side by spider-like mandibles.

Foster reached for his cudgel slowly, but the small creature only lingered in the light for a moment, letting out a melodious chirping sound before bounding out of the beam of light with surprising speed.

The Constable spun in place cautiously, trying to search the entire space with the feeble light of his lantern. A few seconds later he heard a small splash in the water.

He felt a brief moment of relief, then he heard the rustling of a much larger creature somewhere in the rafters over his head. As he turned to look up he just barely caught sight of a massive shadow falling through the corner of his vision, then a much larger, heavier splash emanated from the water in front of him.

First he felt shock at the appearance of such a massive form, then relief when he quickly concluded that whatever it was had fled. That relief quickly turned to terror as he realized that instead of silence he was hearing a subtle swishing sound in the water, and that the shadows he was beginning to see under the surface weren’t simply a byproduct of the shallow waves.

He didn’t have any time or desire to think. Instead he fled, turning back towards the door and running as if his life depended on it.

It took Foster almost half an hour to reach the safety of the station. It took him another half hour to relate what he had seen to his superiors, and to convince them that he wasn’t raving mad.

Under different circumstances convincing others of his sanity might have been much more difficult, if not impossible. Thankfully, or perhaps unfortunately, the men and women he worked with were all accustomed to strangeness and violence. Plymouth was a largely peaceful place, but they all knew of the abnormal things that existed elsewhere in the world, and each and every one of them was determined not to let any of that unpleasantness take root so near to home.

A course of action was agreed to almost immediately, but it took another two hours to pull three more Constables off of their night patrols and get them all properly outfitted.

In this case, properly outfitted meant unlocking the old storage closet in the back of the station to pull out four hand grenades and a hand-pumped flame thrower. Each of the four took a grenade, and two of them, Anthony Marshall and Darin Arnold, teamed up to take the flame thrower. Anthony strapped the tank to his back and took the pump in hand, while Darin took the nozzle and igniter.

The extra weight of the grenade opposite the cudgel on Foster’s belt was unsettling, and he felt extremely under prepared in comparison to the two men behind him carrying the heavy weapon.

Still, he felt much less exposed with the two men watching his back and Freddie Black on his left, her own grenade and heavy stick supplemented by the half dozen or so knives that she was notorious for keeping on her person.

Foster led the way, the larger lantern he had picked up at the station illuminating almost the entire street in front of them. No one spoke for the near hour it took to walk back to the abandoned building next to the water. When they finally arrived in front of the closed door, Foster found himself at a loss for words.

Ultimately, Freddie put a finger to her lips, then motioned for Foster to open the door, indicating that the other two should rush in after him. Logical, given that he was holding their only source of light.

Foster hesitated for just a moment, then nodded, shoving the door open with his shoulder and pouring light into the space.

At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary, the space looking just as deserted as it had the first time he had entered. When he turned the lantern on where the body had been, he found it still lying there, a small black shape curled up in the crook of its exposed neck.

The shape cried out as the light fell on it, then lept down the dock towards the water.

Foster found himself at a loss, the creature too far away and moving too fast for him to reach it with his cudgel.

Thankfully, his companions were better prepared. Freddie shoved him bodily against the wall, out of the way of the two men behind them. As soon as they were both clear, Anthony and Darin shot a burst of flame at the leaping shape.

The creature cried out in pain, its leap turning into an uncontrolled tumble as it bounced off the hard concrete floor and into the water.

The splash was followed almost immediately by a quiet squelching sound, and Foster spun on his heels, shining the lantern light at the opposite side of the dock.

A much larger creature had appeared behind them, climbing down from the ceiling and onto the ground in near silence.

It seemed to be a much larger version of the thing they had just incinerated; its four black arms at least twelve feet in length, and the beak it extended towards Anthony and Darin easily as large as a human head.

Foster shouted wordlessly, and Darin spun to face the direction he was staring, tangling himself in the hose of the flame thrower as he did. Then it was Anthony and Darin’s turns to scream as they tried to disentangle themselves and bring the weapon to bare.

Two of the creatures long arms shot out, tangling around Anthony and Darin and trying to force them towards its maw. The two men fought valiantly, but Darin had already lost his footing and fallen to one knee.

As Foster stood stunned he noticed that Freddie wasn’t facing the new threat, but instead towards the water.

Foster closed his mouth to stop his own screaming and turned to follow her eyes.

The pool in the center of the building was churning. Shapes similar to the one they had already burned, though larger, were jumping up out of the water before splashing back down again, all of them surging towards the ramp leading to the intruders.

Foster drew his cudgel instinctively, realizing even as he did so that the gesture was useless. There were simply too many of them.

Freddie was thankfully more level headed. She slipped the grenade off of her belt, pulled the pin, and lobbed it into the water. Then she reached for Foster’s belt and repeated the process with his grenade as well.

Foster braced himself for the explosion, and was startled as a roar of flames exploded behind him. He turned his head to find that Anthony and Darin had managed to fire a prolonged burst at the large creature that was assailing them. Darin was lying on his back, angling the nozzle directly into the open beak of the unnatural beast to fire at point blank range.

The large figure let out an unworldly cry, far louder and deeper than the one that the smaller creature had managed, and dove for the water as well.

Two subdued explosions proceeded a much larger splash as the massive beast tumbled beneath the surface.

Anthony and Darin echoed Freddie’s earlier action, pulling the grenades from their belts and chucking them lazily into the water. Foster didn’t know if it would do any good, but it seemed as reasonable a course of action as any.

The Constable numbly noted that the building was on fire as they made their way outside, shaken, and in Anthony and Darin’s cases, burned and bloodied, but alive.

Freddie dragged the corpse of a young woman behind them as they departed.

The next morning, after a few hours of fitful sleep, Foster found himself summoned to the Mayor’s office.

It wasn’t a unique occurrence. The Mayor was an eccentric man, and he liked to stay informed about what was happening in the town. His town, as he often referred to it. No doubt he wanted the whole story straight from Foster’s mouth.

After the night’s events the Constable had passed out at the station, which was thankfully situated just down the street from the old city hall. He took a few extra minutes to rinse out his mouth, wash the soot off of his face, and put on a fresher uniform before following the aid that had been sent to fetch him to the site of his next interrogation.

When the aid finally left him it wasn’t with the Mayor himself, but instead a secretary in her forties sitting at a large desk in front of his office. She informed Foster that he would have to wait a while.

Foster barely processed what the woman had said, distracted with noting the bags under her eyes and what looked like tear streaks on her cheeks.

The Mayor finally called for him a few minutes later, and Foster let himself in through the heavy double doors.

Mayor Waters sat behind his desk, scribbling on a small sheet of paper. He was a large man who bordered on truly fat. Like the woman outside he had bags under his eyes, though his were less pronounced. Part of Foster was glad that he wasn’t the only one who was tired, but had everyone in Plymouth lost sleep last night?

“Ah, Constable Hayden. I heard you lead something of an impromptu raid on the waterfront last night.” Mayor Waters’s voice was subdued. He opened one of his desk drawers and removed something before placing the page he had been writing on inside.

“Lead is a strong word, but yes. I provided the initial information and guided a few other Constables to the location in question to take care of the situation.” Foster eyed the two heavy armchairs in front of the Mayor’s desk, but he hadn’t been asked to sit so he reluctantly remained standing.

The Mayor leaned back in his seat, spreading his hands over his stomach.

“’The situation’ referring to the unfortunate business involving the dear miss Sara Poole?” The Mayor asked. The man looked tired. No, not tired, bereaved.

“Yes sir. Though we haven’t confirmed the identity of the body as of yet,” Foster replied, confused.

“I take it that you haven’t seen the doctor’s report then. I’ll save you the trouble. The body you dragged out of that building last night was Sara Poole. I identified her this morning myself. Were you aware that she was working for my office?”

“No, sir,” Foster answered, suspecting the Mayor was about to launch into one of his famous monologues.

“I’m not surprised, she didn’t advertised it. Sara joked that it would hurt her credibility as an artist. She started almost two months ago. A temporary stand in for Lidia out there. A brilliant girl. Smart, sensitive, creative, beautiful… Her death is a real tragedy. She will be sorely missed by everyone here. Tell me Constable, how would you describe the circumstances of this terrible business?”

Foster shook his head noncommittally.

“I don’t rightly know sir. As I said, I wasn’t even certain of her identity until you confirmed it. When I first found her she was being gnawed on by some abnormal creature. I suppose it’s possible that it, or something like it, killed her. Or that someone else did it and dumped her in the empty building, and whatever it was we found was just scavenging her corpse.” Foster was having a hard time reading the Mayor’s expression. The man’s face was blank. Maybe it was just his way of concealing grief.

After a few seconds of visible consideration the Mayor nodded.

“Yes, I see how you could come to that conclusion. Tell me Constable, what happened to the creature you say you found… gnawing… on her?”

The Mayor’s expression was dark. It occurred to Foster that “gnawing” may not have been the best adjective to describe what had happened to one of his staff members.

“It’s dead sir. At least I can only imagine it is. We burned it.”

Mayor Waters sighed sadly, then produced a pearl handled revolver and set it on the table pointing at the Constable, his finger lightly tapping the trigger.

Foster froze, his hand inches from his cudgel. He had never fired a gun before, but he knew how they worked in principle, and the Mayor was just eccentric enough to have both the revolver and the ammunition to match.

“I was afraid you might put things in those terms. Personally, I had hoped that you might be brought around to the right side of things, in spite of your recent… transgressions. Unfortunately, I don’t think that will be possible under the circumstances.”

“I don’t rightly understand sir,” Foster responded warily, playing for time. He really didn’t understand.

Mayor Waters rose to his feet, one hand holding the revolver, the other covering an apparent pain in his stomach.

“I’m afraid you’ve been looking for foul play where there never was any Constable. Poor Ms. Poole died of natural causes. Bled out after giving birth in fact. I told her she needed to take better care of herself. Carrying one of the little ones isn’t the same as a normal child... The body doesn’t fatten itself up the same way... I suppose she was concerned other people would notice, or maybe she was just worried about her figure.” The Mayor broke into a coughing fit, and Foster was tempted to rush the man. He resisted the urge, figuring that he wouldn’t be able to make it over the desk before the larger man got a shot off.

After the coughing subsided, the Mayor resumed his tirade.

“She wasn’t due for another week, the poor dear, and none of us were at the sanctum that night. As far as we can tell, she wandered in early in the morning. She should have gone for help, but she must have been concerned for the little one. She cared for them so much. I’ve never seen anyone take to them as quickly as she did, be so eager to carry one of their own.”

The Mayor coughed again, a jet of black and red shooting out of his midsection as he did.

Foster stepped back instinctively, expecting another gush of blood. Surprisingly, the Mayor was still on his feet, a trickle of red fluid running down his bulk and a coin sized hole in his jacket.

In a state of disbelief, Foster’s eyes ran from the Mayor to the other side of the room. A writhing ball of tentacles laid at the end of a long trail of blood, flopping helpless on the floor. As Foster watched, it slowly righted itself, drawing itself up on four limbs and seeming to stare up at Mayor Waters.

Foster acted reflexively, drawing his cudgel and stepping forward to clobber the abomination to death. He would figure out how it had gotten into the Mayor’s stomach later.

He had barely made it two steps before he heard a loud bang, then felt a blinding pain shoot through his right arm.

The next time Foster opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the floor. Mayor Waters was standing over him with the small creature curled up in one arm, nuzzling him like a particularly affectionate kitten. His other hand still held the pearl handled revolver.

“I didn’t have to explain any of this to you Foster. I could have just had you beaten down in the street, or chopped up into chum, but I thought you should know. At one point I had high hopes for you, that you could see reason, but you’ve proven that impossible.

“You’re not going to die because you discovered our secret, or even because of your own ignorant stupidity. You’re going to die because you took the tragedy of a beautiful, brilliant woman’s death and made it worse by killing her offspring and assaulting the being that saw fit to bless her with it. My only regret is that this will be over so quick.”

Foster never heard the second gun shot. The bullet had already torn through his brain before the sound reached his ears.

If anyone was hoping for something a bit longer than my usual stories, this is for you. I hope you all enjoy it. As always, thanks for reading.

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