Read Online The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington) by Alan K Baker - Free Book Online

then Walter Goodman-Brown screamed, just as Alfie Morgan had done. He screamed until there was no breath left in his lungs, and then he inhaled and screamed again, and again.
    Blackwood lunged forward, grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him out of the seat.
    ‘Thomas, we have to get him out of here, now!’ said Sophia.
    ‘Understood. Give me a hand.’
    With Goodman-Brown between them, they staggered back to the doors at the centre of the carriage and hurried down the steps to the shop floor. The psychometrist was virtually insensate now, his body a dead weight. Blackwood and Sophia laid him down upon the concrete.
    ‘Walter,’ said Sophia, bending over and examining his contorted face. ‘Walter, can you hear me?’
    Some of the workmen who had been alerted by Goodman-Brown’s screams hurried over. ‘What’s goin’ on?’ demanded one. ‘What the bleedin’ hell do you people fink you’re playin’ at?’
    ‘Go and fetch Mr Sullivan,’ said Blackwood.
    ‘Hold on,’ the man said. ‘Who the bleedin’ hell are you lot, anyway?’
    ‘Shut up and do as you’re told!’ thundered Blackwood, standing up to face the rapidly growing group. Withdrawing his identification from his coat pocket, he added, ‘We are Crown investigators, and you will follow my orders or pass the night behind bars.’
    Startled, the workmen glanced at each other, and one of them hurried off towards the offices.
    He returned less than a minute later, accompanied by Derek Sullivan, who looked down at Goodman-Brown. ‘Good God! What’s happened to the fellow?’
    ‘We need to take him to a place of peace and quietness immediately,’ said Sophia.
    ‘There’s… there’s a couch in my office,’ Sullivan replied.
    ‘Good,’ said Blackwood. ‘Give me a hand to get him up; there’s a good chap.’
    Together, they carried Goodman-Brown across the shop floor and up the stairs into the section of the building containing the administration offices. Sophia followed them to Sullivan’s office and closed the door behind them, while Blackwood and Sullivan carefully placed the psychometrist on the couch. Deeply shaken and muttering to himself, the depot manager went across to a small cabinet and withdrew a bottle of whiskey and a glass. ‘Will this be of benefit, do you think?’
    ‘Yes, bring it over,’ Sophia replied, crouching down beside Goodman-Brown and undoing his shirt collar.
    Sullivan poured a measure of whiskey and handed it to Sophia. Goodman-Brown appeared to be regaining his senses a little, and Sophia put the glass gently to his lips. He grimaced as he swallowed. ‘I’m all right,’ he whispered. ‘I’m all right.’
    ‘What the devil happened in there?’ demanded Sullivan.
    Blackwood held up a hand, ordering him to silence. ‘What was it, Goodman-Brown?’ he asked quietly. ‘Can you tell us what it was?’
    ‘It was… like nothing I’ve ever seen before,’ the psychometrist replied, taking the glass from Sophia and downing the rest of the whiskey. ‘It wasn’t a ghost – nothing so mundane! It was alive, I’m quite sure of that: a living, conscious thing, possessed of awareness and purpose.’
    ‘What purpose?’ asked Blackwood.
    ‘I’m not sure… its thought processes were… utterly non-human…’
    ‘And its appearance?’
    Goodman-Brown laughed harshly. ‘The only reason I am still sane, Mr Blackwood, is that I was not actually present when it appeared – unlike poor Mr Morgan. It was most assuredly not of this world! It was something fantastically, hideously alien.’
    ‘But what did it look like, Goodman-Brown?’ Blackwood persisted.
    The psychometrist shook his head. ‘You may have difficulty believing this, Mr Blackwood, but I can’t describe it. Its shape… will not fit into my memory, just as it did not fit completely into my awareness while I was looking at it. It was simply too other . I don’t know how else to explain it.’
    ‘Forgive me, sir,’ rejoined Blackwood, ‘but