Last Aerie

I Harry's Passing To the members of E-Branch, bad dreams were an occupational hazard; it was generally accepted that nightmares went with the work. Ben Trask, current head of the Branch, had always had his share of bad dreams. Indeed, since the Yulian Bodescu affair twelve years ago, he'd had more than his share. And only half of them when he was asleep. The sleeping ones were of the harmless variety: they frightened but couldn't kill you. They were engendered of the waking sort, which were very different: sometimes theycouldkill and worse. Because they were real. As for this one: it wasn't so much a bad as a weird dream. And weirder because Trask was wide awake, having driven his car through the wee small hours of a rainy night into the heart of London, and parked it opposite E-Branch HQ...without knowing why. And Trask was fussy about things like that; he generally liked to be responsible for his actions. It was a Sunday in mid-February of 1990, one of those rare days when Trask could get away from his work and switch off, or rather switch on. To the normal world which existed outside the Branch. It should have been one of those days, anyway. But here he was, at E-Branch HQ in the middle of the sleeping city, and in the eye of his mind this weird dream which wouldn't go away, this daydream repeating over and over, like flickering frames from an old monochrome movie projected onto a window, so that he could see right through it. A ghost film: if he blinked his eyes rapidly it would vanish, however momentarily, and return just as soon as he relaxed: A corpse, smouldering, with its fire-blackened arms flung wide; steaming head thrown back as in the final agony of death; tumbling end over end into a black void shot through with thin neon bars or ribbons of blue, green, and red light. It was a tortured thing, yes, but dead now from all of its torments and no longer suffering; unknown and unknowable as the weird waking dream which it was. And yet there was something morbidlyfamiliarabout it; so that watching it, Trask's face was grey and his lips drawn back in a silent snarl from his strong, slightly yellow teeth. If only the corpse would stop tumbling for a moment and come into focus, give him a clearer shot of the blistered, silently screaming face... Trask got out of his car into a sudden squall of leaden raindrops, as if some Invisible One had dipped his hands in water and scooped it into Trask's face. Muttering a curse as he turned up the collar of his overcoat, he glanced at the building across the street, craning his neck to peer up at the high windows of E-Branch. Up there he expected to see a lightjust one, burning in a window set central in the length of the entire upper story which was the Branchlighting the room which housed the duty officer through his lonely night vigil. Well, he saw the duty officer's light, right enough, and keeping it company, three or four more which he hadn't expected. But he saw more than the lights, for even the rain couldn't wash away the tortured, monotonously tumbling figure from the screen of his mind. Trask knew that if he were someone or thing other than who and what he washead of a top-secret, in more than one way esoteric security organizationthen the experience must surely scare the hell out of him. Except, well, he'd been scared by experts. Or he might believe he was going mad. But there again, E-Branch was...E-Branch. This thing he was experiencing, it must be in his mind, he supposed. Ithadto be, for there was no physical mechanism to account for it. Or was there? Hallucination? Well, possibly. Someone could have got to him, fed him drugs, brainwashed him...but to what end? Why bring him heLumley, Brian is the author of 'Last Aerie' with ISBN 9780812520620 and ISBN 0812520629.