Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

Burton helped the war correspondent to his feet. “Let's get upstairs. God, my head! I was just knocked sideways by memories!”

He gave support to his friend and they made their way up and through to the front bedroom. The other upper chamber was given over to storage.

The din of hammering tentacles continued below. Burton was breathing heavily. He lowered Wells onto a bed, then staggered back and leaned against a wall, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes.

“Algernon,” he whispered, and when he looked up, there were tears on his cheeks.

“What is it?” the shorter man asked.

Burton didn't answer. He was looking beyond his companion, at a dressing table mirror, and the face that stared back from it was that of a total stranger. It was all he could see. He fell into its black, despair-filled eyes and was overwhelmed by such a powerful sense of loss that his mind began to fracture.

“Richard!” Wells snapped. “Hey!”

The room sucked back into focus.

“Where am I?” Burton gasped. He felt hollow and disassociated.

Wordlessly, Wells pointed at the window.

After drawing a shuddering breath, Burton crossed to it, but he quickly stepped back when he saw thorny vines crawling over the glass.

“Manipulated and accelerated evolution,” the war correspondent observed. “Another of the Eugenicists' ill-conceived monstrosities. That thing was once a man in a vehicle. Look at the damned thing now! So who's this Algy person?”

“Algernon Swinburne.”

“The poet? Yes, of course, you knew him, didn't you?”

“He is-was-my assistant.”

“Really? In what?”

“I have no idea. But I recall fleeing from a fire with him slung over my shoulder.”

“Fire is what we need now. It's the only way we'll destroy the lurcher. Step a little farther back from the window, Richard. The stalks are strong enough to break through the glass.”

Burton hastily retreated. He looked around the room at the furniture, the pictures, and the ornaments. Everything was crawling with ants and cockroaches. Even this fact stirred buried recollections. The name “Rigby” rose into his awareness then sank away again.

Wells said, “My leg is hurting like hell.”

“Stay here while I have a poke about in the other room,” Burton responded. He went out onto the landing and into the chamber beyond. Wells sat and massaged his right thigh.

A loud crack sounded from below as the front door split under the lurcher's continued assault.

Burton came back in.

“Any luck?” Wells asked.

“A whole bottle of it.” Burton held up a wide-necked container. “Turpentine.”

Wells pulled something from his jacket pocket. “And a box of four whole matches. Yours for the price of two pieces of toffee.”

“Deal.”

Burton crossed to the window and, after putting the bottle on the floor, used both hands to slide the sash up. It squealed loudly and jammed, with less than a foot of it open.

“Look out!” Wells shouted.

The explorer staggered back as two flailing stalks came smashing through the glass and wood, showering splinters over both men. The spiny appendages coiled and slashed around the room, gouging the furniture and ripping long gashes across the walls.

Wells, acting without thinking, threw himself back onto the bed, clutched the thin mattress, and rolled, wrapping it around himself. He lunged upright and dived at the window, letting out an agonised scream as pain knifed through his wounded leg. He landed across the stalks, pinning them to the floor. They bucked under him and curled back, slapping against the bedding, shredding it.

“Quick, man! I can't hold it!”

Burton sprang at the bottle, which was rolling over the floorboards, scooped it up, and untwisted the cap. Unable to get past Wells to stand directly in front of the window, he stuck his arm through it from the side and poured the turpentine, praying to Allah that it would land on the target.

“The lucifers, Bertie!”

“I dropped the bloody things!”

A ragged length of the mattress's cotton cover was ripped away exposing the horsehair stuffing beneath. The material flew into the air as one of the stalks whipped up and back down, thumping across the correspondent's body.

Burton, having spotted the matchbox lying on the floor, scrambled across the room. He crawled and rolled on broken glass.

“Have you got them?” Wells yelled.

“Yes!”

Snatching up the length of torn material, Burton reeled back to the front wall, thudded against it, and slid into a crouch beside the window.

Wells was suddenly sent spinning into the air as the long stalks jerked violently and slid from the room.

The battering noises ceased.

Burton, with a puzzled expression, stood and cautiously peered out of the window. The stalks were nowhere in sight. Carefully, he leaned out and looked down.

The lurcher was below, quivering and jerking as if in the grip of a seizure.

“What's happened to it?” he murmured.

He pulled a match from the box, struck it, put the flame to the torn cotton, and dropped the burning cloth onto the plant, which immediately exploded into flames.

As he watched, the fire turned from blue to yellow and started to belch thick black smoke.

He turned and started to speak but realised that Wells was unconscious.

“Bertie, are you all right?”

The war correspondent shifted and groaned.

Pulling away the tattered mattress, Burton helped his companion to sit upright. Wells's uniform was ripped and bloodstained.

“You're bleeding, Bertie.”

“Nothing serious,” his friend croaked. “So are you. Is it dead?”

“Yes. It was odd, though. The thing appeared to lose control of itself just before I set fire to it. Let's get out of here.”

They limped from the bedroom and down the stairs, pulled open the wrecked front door, and tumbled out onto the street.

The lurcher had already been reduced to a twitching bonfire.

“Wait here,” Burton said. “I'll get your crutches.”

He retrieved them from outside the alley farther down the road and returned.

“You did exactly what he would have done,” he said, handing over the sticks.

“Who?”

“Algernon Swinburne. He's the most fearless man I've ever known.”

“That's where the comparison fails, then. I was scared out of my wits.”

“You're a good chap, Bertie.”

The Orpheus was over southern France by the time Sir Richard Francis Burton woke up. After two nights in a row with virtually no sleep, he'd been oblivious for the first hours of the voyage.

Now he stood on the observation deck, enjoying the view and feeling an immense sense of release. Departure always lifted his spirits, and as the shackles and restraints of civilisation fell away, he was giving himself up to that which he liked best: the lure and promise of the unknown.

Algernon Swinburne entered and joined him at the window.

“What ho! What ho! And what ho again! But you missed a top nosh-up at lunch, Richard!”

“I've been dead to the world, Algy. What have you been doing, apart from lining your stomach, that is?”