That is how matters stood on the night of Jan. 16, 1998, when all Swinehurst was quite suddenly plunged into a swirling miasma of terror!
The entire household was fast asleep, excepting my nephew Bingo, who was elsewhere, and my sister Athena, who was pottering around as usual in her underground laboratory.
All was peace and tranquility until I was awakened by the sound of breaking glass, the result of large stones bursting through my window, which I knew to be a signal from the aliens in the swamp. At the same time the hounds started barking at the top of their lungs!
I snatched up my dressing gown and no sooner had I gotten into my slippers than I heard the report of shots fired ! As Bingo was not on the premises, I knew there was trouble!
I don’t mind telling you it was a relief to find the staff and our West Wing lodgers assembled at the foot of the stairs, all armed to the teeth, and together we raced out into the storm towards the source of those ominous reports.
There was no mistaking it! The area surrounding Athena’s laboratory had become a stage of desperate gunplay!
And there, barely visible on the Black Cliffs, pelted by rain and hail, was a large aircraft of unknown nationality! Athena was being dragged towards this triangular monstrosity by what appeared to be human fellows in military costume!
Readers, few things in this world are as intolerable as the sight of one’s dear sister being rough-handled. I drew a bead on the fellow who had Athena in a choke-hold, but at that instant he was incinerated by a bolt of lightning, so there you are! Yet another wrongdoer Smote by the Unseen Hand !
Athena was a bit singed but otherwise intact, as lightning has little effect on her anymore, and whilst the staff, aliens and lodgers made mincemeat of the enemy she explained the desperate events leading up to her rescue. I was not surprised to learn that the tea enzyme research was at the bottom of it all!
Yes! The midnight intruders had burst into her laboratory demanding Athena’s experimental notes, and when she refused there was a terrible flap indeed! The laboratory floor was ankle-deep in spent magazines and shell casings! I have never seen the place so untidy, not even after the tunnel-baring explosion which you read about in these pages last month! Well, as my sister said later, it’s a good thing she keeps important paperwork in a biscuit tin under her bed.
How those obviously foreign criminals knew of the enzyme business is still a mystery, and I am loathe to credit Dr. Ku’s theory that my nephew had anything to do with it. Bingo knows nothing about good tea, readers, and less about science! True, all sorts of villains can be found lurking in his public house, pirates mostly, but surely he would not betray his own mother into the hands of evildoers! All the same, mum’s the word about the biscuit tin, readers.
Well, looking on the bright side, we have come into possession of a most remarkable aircraft, made nicer still now the Yetis have given it a coat of paint. Athena says it’s just the thing for her little jaunts, as it takes off straight up into the air! Quite an advantage given the zero visibility conditions and cyclonic winds hereabouts.
I have handed out all the confiscated weaponry to the aliens in the swamp, who were quite rightly fed up collecting rocks when in a crisis everyone else at Swinehurst has the benefit of big-bore firearms (as I hope you have, readers!).
At first I thought it was just a quirk of the air pressure hereabouts, which is ever in a state of flux owing to our local storms and gales, but it wasn’t long before the doors started to warp and balloon in a most alarming rhythm! Something was pounding at them like a battering ram!
To be on the safe side I took out the Tranter 30 bore (double trigger) from its compartment in my secretary, drank the last of my tea ,and braced for the possibility of a duel with The Unknown.
By then the doors were cracking and splintering like all getout, and in a moment they were torn off the hinges top and bottom, then slammed to the floor and crushed beneath the weight of the ferocious intruder!
When the dust settled I was confronted by the hideously pulsing and flailing antennae of a GIANT SNAIL!
Readers, try to imagine the sensation of utter helplessness upon coming face to face, as it were, with that enormous , dangerously excited gastropod! I don’t mind telling you I ducked under the reading table lickety-split, shouting the 23rd Psalm at the top of my lungs! In vain did I empty my pistol against the advancing monster! As the bullets ricocheted off its colossal shell my entire life flashed before me, and I vowed to be more attentive in future to my nephew Bingo’s complaints of huge mollusks abroad in the hallways!
Soon the entire household was aroused, and it is at this point in my account that I come to an event which will surely astound all regular readers and correspondents:
In that dark hour of crisis it was none other than my addlepated nephew Bingo who organised my rescue! As ever, he took his time about it, but when I finally heard the distant rattle of barrels echoing down the hallway and then smelt the distinct odour of Smithwick’s Ale I knew I was saved!
The beast changed course immediately and headed straight for the spewing rivers of ale, therein to drown. Bingo might have drowned too but for the blasted interference of my dear sister, who suffered a nasty scrape on the elbow whilst diving repeatedly into the currents after her son.
Now of course there is no living with either of them, and I suppose I’ll have to listen to jokes about my marksmanship until Kingdom Come. A small price to pay! I might have been mashed into the floorboards by that horrible Snailzilla! Every time I pass by its huge but neatly coiled empty shell, which the aliens in the swamp have converted into some sort of dwelling, I am overcome by the very thought!
So you see, readers, lay off the Smithwicks, or it won’t be there in good supply when you need it for medicinal purposes, to say nothing of its snail-killing properties should these horrid creatures invade your home!
In a reprise of that long-ago excitement, the hounds led me straight to my nephew Bingo, who looked as if he had just seen Great Caesar’s Ghost On A Bicycle!
I took it hard that the hounds would enforce any summons from my sister’s addlepated and utterly worthless spawn, but it was then that I noticed the glowing object which held him in thrall.
At first I thought it was just another eerily mutating crocodile egg, not worth bothering about, but when I prodded it gently with my hammer the pulsating, mucilagenous sac began to swell horribly until it burst open, spewing out a cloud of sulfurous fumes!
Before I could ask Bingo what in blazes went on, a grotesque reptilian form appeared out of the vaporous cloud! It looked like an enormous glowing two-headed avocado with bat-like wings and twin magpie beaks! More details than that I cannot provide, owing to the blinding effects of the apparition, to say nothing of the storm.
My nephew ran as fast as his bandy legs could carry him, and I too might have gone back to Swinehurst none the wiser had my hounds not set up their cry most piteously at what they saw next! I turned to face it, and I didn’t need the Geographic Society to tell me what it was: the avocado thing’s MOTHER! Twice as tall as Nelson’s Column, and puffed out like a giant goat’s bladder!
Her great gelatinous bulk and leathery wings displaced a good deal of water , thrashing and bellowing all over the place, and I was glad I had dozed off at naptime while still wearing my foul weather gear and motorcycle helmet. I have no idea what these creatures were, but you wouldn’t want to leave milk on the doorstep for them, that I can tell you. Neither of them took any notice of Bingo despite my most urgent pointing in his direction. Instead, the Mother snatched up her hatchling and off they flew, destination unknown, roaring and belching fire, tossing and tumbling in the gales.
Before long they were struck by lightning and plummeted to earth somewhere in the vicinity of Athena’s field laboratory tent. Judging by the mountainous excreta all over the landscape those poor creatures are still out there in the swamp, where I fear they may fall prey to the local wildlife.
Bingo has been less than forthcoming about his initial “discovery” of the eggs despite my efforts to draw him out on the subject. All inquiry was cut short owing to pressures of other business (transfers of stock and personnel from Hong Kong to St. Kilda tea warehouses) and upon my return from foreign climes the investigative trail was cold.
Several of my Yeti houseguests have shown me blurred photographs they have taken of the creatures, but I doubt their authenticity. The photo subjects look nothing like the flying avocado things, and to my certain knowledge the Yetis are a notoriously fanciful lot, forever sighting “monsters” which turn out to be government weather balloons and the like! Still, to be on the safe side, I remind all Swinehurst visitors that entering the swamp is an assigned risk.
Only when I was back on my feet did I see two smallish gentlemen standing beside the vessel, which was no longer at its best. They were louring at me! Nervy beggars! I was all set to have at them when Athena, ever the soul of hospitality, inserted herself at midpoint between the hammer and its rather hideous targets.
In no time the two gents were helping themselves to biscuits and tea in the breakfast room of Swinehurst. All I can say is, their tailor must have been half-blind on whiskey to have cobbled together such gaudy costumes , but of course one mustn't judge a book by its cover. I'll admit I didn't like the look of them, but I was forced to rearrange my views when their strange tale began to unfold, and now I come to the part which may interest many of my regular correspondents:
As it develops, these two crude and unmannerly foreigners were enroute from some tongue-twisting zone, just north of Alpha something or other in outer space, when their conveyance was sucked into the stygian vortex which constitutes the climate of Swinehurst.
To their credit, those two had plainly made it their business beforehand to learn the English language , although this conversational advantage did not entirely compensate for their unpleasant and apparently uncontrollable bodily functions. I give top marks to Athena for her restraint! Not once did she flinch from the onslaught of gaseous emissions and eructations produced by these peculiar guests! Needless to say, Bingo noticed nothing amiss. I made my excuses and stood well back, ducking out altogether from time to time so as to gasp for breath.
Finally I hit on the idea of wearing my motorcycle helmet and, with the aid of a battery-operated miniature fan duct-taped to the front of my foul weather jacket, I was able to take my rightful place at the head of the table. It was then that I learned the long and short of our guests’ terrible dilemma. They were, in a word, FUGITIVES!
Some sort of alien race was forever kidnapping millions of hapless persons and livestock from our guests’ home territory and doing unspeakable scientific experiments on them! These two little fellows were chosen by their countrymen as an expeditionary team to find a new habitat, preferably compatible with Home, and to send word the moment all was in readiness for a relocation . Alas, the plan was found out, the kidnappers gave chase, and our guests barely escaped interception with their hindquarters intact. After years of drifting through outer space, which probably explains their baleful appearance, they regained consciousness upon entering the atmosphere of Swinehurst.
After hearing this account of their troubles I gave them directions to St. Kilda and promised to find them positions at my tea warehouses there. They set out in high spirits to repair their vessel and be off, only to find that the hardware and implements supplied by my scabrous nephew Bingo did not answer the purpose. Confused and lost in a world of grief and disappointment, the poor little fellows wandered off in the direction of the swamp and have not been heard from since. I suppose the stench of rotting vegetable matter and septic wetlands reminded them of home.
Meanwhile Athena and Bingo have come down with a rather angry skinrash. They might have followed my example and taken due safeguards, but Obstinacy At All Times is their motto.
For my part, I have written a letter to The Times deploring the apparent news blackout of this interstellar kidnapping business. Decent people will not take much interest in space travel if it is learned that kidnappers are tolerated while law-abiding creatures are hounded mercilessly from pillar to post throughout the universe!
I for one have changed my holiday plans accordingly and I advise readers to do likewise until this matter is fully investigated.
As regular correspondents may or may not know, my dear sister Athena has devoted herself to her work as head of the Swinehurst Engineering Abnormalities Research Unit, founded by my father, R.U.O.K “Gordon” Rohde in 1912, and whose purpose is to investigate unexplained phenomena along lines of what you and I would call Mind Over Matter. It’s not my cup of tea, but Athena spends most of the day and night pottering around in the cellars amongst her scientific gadgets and props.
On June 13 a convention of Athena’s colleagues worldwide was held here, and I am sorry to say it was not a happy time for the poor girl. It was to be her shining moment but as things developed it was a fairly dreadful occasion for one and all. What I am about to report may be dangerously provocative to some of you, particularly Athena’s fellow gun hobbyists, and so I must ask that everyone remain calm.
The trouble started when a squinty little French fellow from some university or another put on his demonstration, a rather tiresome business having to do with baby chickens following a small, madly erratic robot contraption which they apparently took to be their mother. So much for the brainpower of barnyard creatures!
I don’t mind telling you the whole thing was as dull as ditchwater, and when Frenchy clapped all the screeching chicks under a wire cage it wasn’t a moment too soon for yours truly. No doubt we were all expected to oooh and aaah when the robot contraption began hovering worriedly around the caged brood. I suppose the idea was that the nestlings willed it to happen. Much ado about nothing, if you ask me. I once watched my hounds levitate a thousand-pound container of kibble from the hold of a sunken merchant steamer. That’s what comes of allowing them to be Athena’s laboratory subjects, and the less I know about it the better.
Howsomever, just when the Question and Answer part of the program was getting underway and I had well and truly dozed off, the chamber doors burst open! A gang of Poultry Rights ruffians, tipped off by Bingo I’ll wager, ran in waving banners and shouting like Old Nick that we must stop our depraved indifference to animals!
You may well imagine that this shocking intrusion brought me to my feet, whereupon my teacup and saucer were propelled from their perch on my knee, ricocheted off the piano and upset the chicken cage.
Unhinged at this fresh calamity, the poor robot lashed out quite unmercifully at the Poultry bolsheviks whilst the chicks ran amok and were, alas, crushed in the ensuing fracas. My only thought was to protect dear Athena, who tore into the melee alongside her colleagues!
The robot exploded, setting fire to the drapes and spraying shrapnel throughout the chamber, and at that moment the hounds leapt in through the windows, an entrance which quickly put Paid to all accounts, I can tell you! Those scurvy Animal Rights meddlers ran for the swamp like so many glandered elephants, with not so much as a backward glance at the innocent little chickens slain in battle! To say nothing of the valiant if somewhat delusional robot!
I might add that Athena’s scientist friends made a less than cordial exit , so it was with some degree of indifference that I heard of their abduction by pirates thereafter. I let Athena know in no uncertain terms that her Mind Over Matter crowd will have to meet elsewhere in future, and if they try to rent a hall near you, dear reader, take all due safeguards!
Disquieting News Item No.7
After a recent ice storm, the hounds and I came upon a towering glacial mass which had been cast up onto the strand intact. Even as I returned with my camera to take a snapshot of the thing, a bolt of lightning clove it in twain!
When the smoke cleared, out stepped a gigantically tall, long-bearded fellow whose garments would amaze the venerable tailors of Hong Kong! I counted at least seventeen discrete layers of textile on the person of this rather blue-faced colossus!
It took sixteen pots of tea, hot and sweet, to restore our unexpected guest’s power of speech, and it was all we could do to wedge his enormous frame into the breakfast room, where we seated him on six chairs put together in front of the fireplace. When he finally spoke his voice was so loud it quite shook the dentures out of poor Mrs. Grogan’s head, and mind you, our old housekeeper’s own voice has been known to rattle the teacups off the shelves. Think of it, readers! The fellow’s voice was so loud it woke my nephew from his alcoholic delirium!
As it develops, Jay (our guest) informed us that he was a native of Nod, and it was with some regret that I had to inform him of his homeland’s disappearance from the world map. Oddly, he showed no surprise at this news, readers! In fact, sensing terrible trouble, he had walked as far away from that land as his gunboat-sized feet could carry him!
As well as we could make out, he had been tending his sheep one afternoon when a friend brought word that a Mr.Cain, scion of the most horrible family ever to set foot in that region, had announced plans to MARRY JAY’S SISTER! Evidently Jay stalked into town straightaway, and in the punch-up which followed he was beaten within an inch of his life! Next morning his mother dressed him warmly and told him to hide up north until after the wedding, no questions asked. By the look of him, there mustn’t have been a shred of fabric left in Nod after he left! I think his mother knew more than she let on about, but I’m getting ahead of our guest’s account.
Once out of town, Jay met up with a tent salesman who repeated bits of gossip about a tiny ark-building cult thereabouts. Intrigued, our friend made further inquiries but was greeted by gales of laughter everywhere he went, probably owing to his bizarre costume. Driven by worry and grim foreboding, poor Jay pressed on northwards. Before he knew it, his great long legs had carried him far north indeed, and I reckon he was just south of Swinehurst when a catastrophic weather disturbance flash-froze him on the spot! No doubt the rising waters carried him off to the Polar Ice Caps, there to languish until his fortuitous appearance on our shores!
I was most deeply affected by this tale, but my sister Athena and her half-bright son Bingo didn’t believe a word of it! They thought the fellow must have gone unconscious from anabolic steroid abuse and fallen overboard during a holiday cruise’s masquerade party. Trust Bingo to come up with such a fanciful notion!
I am happy to say that Jay has struck up a friendship with the Yetis, who have found him a position on their LaCrosse team, and has made himself quite at home in our West Wing. At my suggestion he gave best part of his wardrobe to the aliens in the swamp, who have constructed a sort of tent with it for their mass meetings . Jay asks to be contacted by anyone in possession of Nod memorabilia (rocks and sticks, as far as I can tell) or culinary receipts, although Mrs. Grogan has warned me that our new guest’s appetite is a threat to the world food supply, so I’d rather you didn’t send the cookbooks.
I shall never forget the dark night when one of those God-forgotten creatures swept down upon my hounds without the slightest provocation, carrying off dear old Kayo just hours after he had won Best of Show! Even Athena’s dead aim with the .30/.30 could not bring down the monster, which had a wingspan the length of a locomotive and ten times the speed!
What sort of lunatic would deliberately set out to attract such a fiend, much less offer it a happy home? Furthermore, if mounds of guano appear on your property, I urge you to shut off any nearby cave entrances at once, readers, and if you see your neighbors unloading truckloads of lumber I would advise you to investigate without delay!
Call a halt to any
bat-house building scheme before it is too late! He who hesitates must surely become a prisoner in
his own home, cringing helplessly at the constant screams of terror next door!
I didn’t much like the idea of handing over those old bones to the anthropologists, but my dear sister Athena has the last word in matters of Science, as regular correspondents well know. In my view, Swinehurst would have been as good a place as any for SMan to await the Last Trump, and considerably more dignified than a museum basement, propped up amongst frightful mummies and other heathenish articles!
It was for this reason that, a few weeks later, I kept my own counsel when the hounds turned up another and far more fascinating item. The moment I laid eyes on it I knew it was no ordinary space alien trinket or shipwreck detritus! And now, for the exclusive delectation of GAZETTE readers, I shall unveil this historic find, which I came upon as follows :
It happens that a section of the Black Cliffs was riven by lightning and, after the landslide, an entire Viking Ship could be plainly seen embedded in the rocky slope! Readers, that boat was loaded to the Plimsoll Line with perfectly preserved jars of pomade, henna and brilliantine, to say nothing of wigs and hairdressing implements! And there, draped about the deck, were fifty rather elegantly turned out skeletons!
Even the hounds were dumbstruck!
I knew at once that, were I to disclose this startling discovery, its import would compel the revision of world history on a massive scale. As I have no desire to see kingdoms totter and reel, nor to set in motion a controversy which might rend the map of Europe, I saw to it that the hairdressing articles were removed to the cellars posthaste, and the ship draped with black tarpaulins.
This camouflage, together with the incessant battery of storms hereabouts, should keep meddlesome historians and anthropologists in the dark to which they are accustomed should an errant Geographic Society vessel pass this way. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, readers, and if you put them on the scent you will be responsible for a hellbroth of sunken ships over the next few years, so mum’s the word.
Meantime, all the Viking toilette articles and plaited wigs will be given to the poor as soon as possible, in keeping with my household policy of preparation for The End. Perhaps if the Vikings had acted thusly, and not been so keen on opening beauty salons worldwide, they might have amounted to something a bit more substantial than opera singing and flouncing about in pointy hats. As it is, their secrets and smartly dressed remains are forever safe on the Black Cliffs, and I regret I cannot say the same for poor old Swinehurst Man’s ten-foot skeleton.
Teacup and immersion heating device in hand, I went in search of a water fountain. But readers, I had not gone three steps when I was abruptly set upon and whisked away by two rather nondescript fellows in black suits!
Before I knew it we were plummeting through a dark tunnel to a place in the bowels of the earth FAR BELOW THE AIRPORT TERMINAL!
When my eyes again became accustomed to the light, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of what appeared to be giant preying mantises dressed in some sort of military costumes. I soon saw that I was in the HQ of a secret airport below the surface of the earth, an installation which eerily resembled its above-ground counterpart in every particular, and that my escorts’ black apparel had been but a clever guise!
Of course I objected at once and demanded to speak to the manager, but it was then that I realized my little immersion heater was the cynosure of all mantis-like eyes! Each time I waved it about they drew back in a most agitated fashion! Struggling to make sense of it all, and by then dangerously weak from tea deprivation, I suddenly caught sight of the insignia worn on every mantis lapel.
Readers, try to imagine my predicament! My eyes beheld , on each iridescent and somewhat garish uniform, a tiny emblem which looked for all the world like a miniature of my trusty immersion coil!
It took me a moment but I finally spied an electrical outlet and a water fountain. Amid the excited clicking and chattering of the mantis regiments, who thronged the immense “terminal,” I measured out my tea and sat down to a cup of the long-awaited brew. There was dead silence as I took the first tentative sip, and despite the unpleasant circumstances my cheerful outlook was immediately restored, an event appparently fraught with meaning if the resultant dances and anthem-singing were any guide.
Then, before you could say Jack Robinson, the whole place began to shake and rattle, lights flashing on and off, wind howling, and amid this tame simulation of the climate to which all Swinehurst is accustomed, a mammoth spacecraft rose up in front of me! Out came what I took to be the Chief Mantis, face wreathed in smiles, and I understood at once that I was to hand over the sacred immersion coil to his tender care!
Regrettably it was still rather hot to the touch when, in an excess of zeal, His Nibs seized the coil over my most violent protests and was immediately burnt to a crisp! At that same instant the whole place went dark and all was Mantis chaos, frenzy and terror!
I barely missed being crushed when the ceiling collapsed, whereupon a dark whirlwind sucked us all upward into the void. Fortunately my carry-on contained a small battery-operated fan, and I managed to lash it out just in time to propel myself sideways out of the whirling funnel to safety!
As luck would have it, I was thrust squarely back into the above-ground terminal and suffered no more than a barked shin when the Redcaps yanked me out of a luggage trolley. A glance at the clock told me that I had been gone a mere ten minutes.
Owing to an apparently worldwide computer failure my plane flight to Hong Kong was cancelled. In fact, all air traffic came to a dead halt everywhere that day, quite a windfall for the taxi drivers, one of whom charged me a king’s ransom. After spending the night with business associates in Jackson Heights I resumed my itinerary, but not before firing off a letter to The New York Times about confiscatory taxi fares in that city!
The government must rectify such taxicab rate abuses if foreign travellers are expected to patronise tourist attractions there, and meantime I advise readers to alter their flight schedules in avoidance of such highway robbery.