Hellsborough Chronicles Book 1: The Dark Peak

Van Hallam with Pip Rippon

Hellsborough Chronicles Book 1: The Dark Peak

Book 1

Chapters 1 - 7

version 1.0 01/11/2023

CHAPTER 1

HMM::OUT(‘Who is Pip Rippon?’)

ask:: unknown // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:142j:i618 [loc::hellsborough//unknown__location//000]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.19.17.2

HMM::IN('..Pip Rippon is a PhD student at the university of Hallamshire_')

:At where?

..The university of Hallamshire is a seat of further education on the other side of the hinge_

:What is the hinge? What is a seat of further education?

..The hinge is the gateway to a parallel universe... A seat of further education is a place where individual persons improve their learning_

:More about 'parallel universe'.

..Classified_

:Classified by who?

..Classified_

Crosslander, Barker, Ganister, Clown

Over there, across the other side of the bar near the door, there’s a clown and a crosslander. Not normally close bedfellows, you’d have thought – and these two, I know this – they’re plotting something.

We’re in a bar, I said that already. We’re almost always in one of them or another. We spend a lot of time in bars, me and Van, truth be told. It’s where we do business, where we talk, where we socialise – where we lose and maintain our mental health, for better or worse – that’s the excuse we tell ourselves anyway.

We’re playing a card game called Cribbage – I say we, he is, Van is. Van always plays alone these days. Well, alone against himself, that is. Me, I gave up a long time ago, I’m no match for him. He always beats me, always has – seems to know what cards I’m going play before I play them. It makes me feel inadequate. So I gave up his game a while back. But no matter, I don’t mind, it is what it is.

We’re alone at our table, but there’s other folk in the bar. There’s talk going on, plenty of it – some is animated, some just hushed whispers. The place is busy, noisy. A bluish oily haze unfurls like murk and a heady stench pervades the small room, no larger than a double garage in the off-world. The light is good enough to see Van by, but dank – tiny creatures flip and flop about in the under-look and the corner-eye. Music plays – a high-energy cacophony that I don’t dislike; I reckon I’ll memorise it and take it home with me – who knows, could be the next big thing in the off-world.

The crosslander is gesticulating with one hand and the clown is nodding, understanding somehow – it’s news to me they share a common language, but I might not be right on that. The clowns and the rest of The Dark Peak’s denizens share a common tongue, but crosslanders, they don’t share that telepathic language. They must be communicating verbally, I guess – in Ing – unless that thing perched on his shoulder is some sort of translation device. I’m not sure what it is, it looks a bit like a toucan would look in the off-world, yet not if you know what I mean?

How do I know they’re plotting something? Well I don’t really, do I? You could say it’s an educated guess. I’ve been about long enough and sat in enough bars with Van, and watched enough to know what plotting looks like and what it doesn’t. While Van studies his cards, I study the folk, I people watch, that’s what I do – you’ve read my diaries, right?

Couldn’t they just be a couple of young alternative types taking the first steps towards a future relationship? I mean, that’s not really that unusual is it?

Yeh, they could be, of course they could. But I know what I have seen and I don’t see this clown and that crosslander doing anything other than plotting something – unscrupulous or otherwise. Clowns don’t ordinarily get themselves involved in acts of rebellion or terrorism, they’re performers and go-betweens, strictly neutral – but crosslanders – they’re famous for it. Most ordinary humans, and when I say ordinary, I’m talking about your regular Hellsboroughite (I almost said jellyhead; a crosslander term of endearment for Hellsborough natives, and a turn of phrase which Van can sometimes use with careless abandon), regard crosslanders as being outside of the law – rebels against society, trouble. And they are; but as you said – I might be wrong, they’re probably stoking the kindling of a fledgling relationship. Heh, I’m flexible, I’m open to suggestions.

We – me and Van – we’ve both consumed several measures of ale already, and the evening is still young. Van hasn’t even started telling me his stories yet, which is – of course – why I’m here. Too much liquor could start making things dangerous – you never really know what he’ll come out with next, but hey ho, never mind, eh? Things are always prone to maybe get tasty at some point; not that I’m a fighter, like he was, but I guess I might be able to shout someone down if I need to. Anyway, with that thought, Van stirs and plays his cards to himself.

For the record, before we go any further, I’m Pip. I’m Van Hallam’s occasional friend, and maybe something of a “lover”, in that I do love him in certain ways. I don’t know, and I doubt if he does – or cares. We’re close-ish I think, that’s really all I can say, we share stuff, a lot of stuff, complicated stuff, you could say. Van’s highly intelligent, but not greatly educated in the ways of grammar and the like, so I have fallen into this odd role – confidante, drinking associate, sometime pusher, biographer – at least I write down some of the things he says so maybe they can be turned into something useful. I record his stories so they can stand the test of time, that’s all. How much truth do I transcribe? I dunno, only Van could tell you that.

I’m pondering the existence of an ash of rheum that has manifested itself on my boot; it is tucking into some muck that I must have picked up in the park. While I’m deliberating, Van seems to be playing the short game: He’s dealt himself five cards, and his other self five cards, deals two into the box. He discards one card from each hand into the box, and makes the best hands he can out of the rest, then takes a long suck on his pipe – I’d stuffed it earlier with one of his favourite off-world blends. I scrape the rheum off with my other boot, you wouldn’t want to do it with an ungloved hand.

Van wears his minimalist DIY psycmask, a thing of his own design (honestly, I think it’s just a disguise, so he fits in when he’s here or hereabouts), that doesn’t interfere with his drinking, or on the hefty pulls of the pipe to ingest those grasping fumes. I see that the mix of both is doing the do – letting Van get wasted and slip into a state of forgive and forget – since there is no forgiveness in this world, so it is better – he says – to forget. There is little point remaining sober, at all, ever, if you want to try and understand the world that you are in – says Van.

They sound like wise words, whichever side of the hinge you live on.

This world, this Hellsborough, is not somewhere you can understand as a “normal” human being, unless you are well and truly muddled up in the head, and even then you only get to peek over the edge of the insanity pit. And Ha-ha, says Van, the insanity pit is a bottomless sewer of stench deeper than, well…

A fat house fly (musca domestica, I studied biology at Oxford in the off-world a couple of years back) coasts about the bar in squares. It’s a warm evening for the time of year, and the murk isn’t excessive – but the ether is heavy enough to make it necessary to wear a psycmask; even the crosslander wears a nose piece. The clown, of course, being indigenous, is fine – able to breath unaided anywhere in The Dark Peak. My psycmask is council issue. I’ve unclipped the feeding section, but it’s uncomfortable. It means I don’t stand out though, and that’s how it has to be. Of course, I get to “benefit” from the council ads and all the rest of the hive chatter. Far from being a comfort, as it is to most of the pop, to me, it’s a constant distraction – but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?

HMM::IN(‘Phernoon Farantees!’)

hits:: 7419383 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.19.44.19

Phernoon, phernoon, phernoon, murktalk mentalists, make me big up you special Farantees, yousurf yo digginheads in this youw noze, youw get yezelf down to Farantees for special like deals and like, you know, proper sound like, yo diggin me ya fellas and ya lasses, time runnin out so youz get yersen downs that pronto likeio, megga bargains on ya booz and ya rock and ya snough an all that, no messin, nowt missin the cut bruvvas and sissers! Dancee, dancin, you be'll rockin areet murkers! Faranteeeeeees!!!

See what I mean? I don’t know anything about this Farantees, and I have no interest, but I’m sure they are more than a profitable enterprise in his world. If it’s not some grifter selling something, it’s DPDC propaganda – and it’s continuous. It doesn’t stop, it’s social media – in your face, in your ears, in your head – all of the time. If it wasn’t for the murk, I could take the psycmask off, but Hellsboroughite’s, with their nanotech and their implants, they’re stuck with it, but I guess if you’re born with it, it’s normal.

Van plucks that fat house fly from the fetid air, smashing it into his ready maw. Deux for deuces he slurs, counting one of his cribbage hands. And one for his knob he says, jabbing his finger at the Jack of Strides.

That was what started it all, Pip. When I was a lad. Bit of a handful I was, says Van, having another suck on his pipe. I’d been dragged up, around here – just round the corner over there, he says nodding his head upwards and outwards towards the Middlewood Road. Mother died giving birth to me, so I’m told. Taken in by a nice enough bunch of folk, my Mother’s sister – Mum – don’t know whether we were blood really. Some of the kids – my cousins, I guess – had grown up and I was the youngest of ’em left at home. Had to learn things quick and always needed to protect mesen from someone or something having a go. Was always a bit different to them though, could never quite put my finger on what it was. Just felt like I didn’t always fit in, I had this independent streak: A need to stand on my own two feet, to forge my own way.

Van spits wings onto the quarry tile floor. Mum cried when she first saw me wearing make-up. But it never felt strange to me. The nethermen did, they’re a strange bunch for sure, and hanging about with them, across the other side of the tracks got me into the make-up. They all use it, it’s their religious beliefs. It became a part of me in those formative years, and never went away. Van briefly removed his trimmed down psycmask then, showing the heavily patterned skin around his eyes – white stars with a green halo adorning that grey lined face.

My family, they weren’t netherlanders. No, they were just jellies – regular folk. They got up when their psycmasks told them to, they went to work and did their jobs, they ate what they were fed when they were fed it. They spent their earnings how they pleased. They were happy enough, I guess. We all grumble a bit doant we, but they weren’t ever the types to go all weird and join any resistance or nowt like that. It wouldn’t ever have crossed their minds that there were owt to resist against. They did what they did, and did what they were told and they got on with their lives, because that’s what you do, init, when you’re human? But as I said, I knew I was different. I tried the other side of the tracks, but you know, some things you know aren’t you. The only thing that stuck was the make-up.

The nethermen – the crosslanders – of which Van speaks are the warring factions that exist beyond the murk of Hellsborough. The long displaced families of the Leys, the Woods, the Marshes and the Moors, they have been at war with each other for eons. Which tribe the crosslander in the bar tonight is from, your guess is as good as mine. I’m no expert, but looking at his markings, if you’re putting me on the spot, I’d say Ley. Don’t hold me to it. The differences between the tribes are subtle, and saying the wrong thing to the wrong one has been known to be a fatal mistake.

Anyway, so I’m told, these tribes of nethermen fight and squabble over nothing much, since there is little to fight and squabble over out there in the crosslands. Life – at least so we are told, beyond Hellsborough – is a miserable existence, and these crosslanders are no better than vermin. The hive chatter says so, so it must be true, eh?

It was a rite of passage, says Van, still pointing at the Jack card. I was that age. That age where fear doesn’t come into the equation. Didn’t know what an equation was back then anyway.

I wonder if he knows what an equation is now, but I let it go:

The Dark Peak, The Wisewood, The Barnsdale forest, they were just place names. I was brought up here, in Hellsbrough, those places held no fear for me, places to be explored and found out about. But now when I think back, I was lucky to ever come back. Of course, things were simpler then, they always are, aren’t they, things are always simpler back in the day.

I don’t ask Van for more details, just leave him to his rambling. I understand his way.

I’d followed the family tradition, of course I had, I didn’t know any better did I really? Despite my dalliances with the netherfolk and the make-up. I kept the psycmask on, that’s what my brothers and sisters did, what my mother and father did. I’d been working in the ganister mines, up on the common; toiling on me hands and knees for a dozen hours a day or more, pulling them carts full of the stuff down the pit lane and then bringing the empty cart back up again so it could be refilled.

It were gruelling work. The psycmask governed me daily life, provided me with everything I needed to survive: Food, breathing help, the entertainment I needed to get me through the working days and neets. After our shifts, we’d go down the pub, or go out and do some sort of activity, you know, picnics, walks, that sort of thing, on days when the murk wasn’t so oppressive. I guess I was content, that’s what they aim for I think, they aim to keep you content, and you don’t notice owt is wrong, because nowt is wrong – nobody says owt is wrong at home or down the pub or out on some social do. So nowt ever is wrong, is it? Everything is normal. So normal that tha never questions it. But is it? Is it normal?

I want to ask Van who they are, but he rolls on with his monologue.

I just knew there was someat better. The nethermen they made me question things, because of the way they attituded themselves. They didn’t think us jellyheads were normal at all. They thought we was all soft in the head, that’s where the phrase comes from you know – jellyhead, pretty obvious, right?

I don’t know what most of their upbringings was, some of them were like me. Some of them were poor, some of them were richer, I didn’t really take them seriously. But they did make me look at things with a set of eyes other than me own, if you know what I mean? They gave me another perspective. I always had this yearning, this reason to strive for someat else, someat better, someat deeper. They – me family – would always try and tell me that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but the thing is – I knew it was. I wasn’t just daydreaming as I pulled that ganister cart and listened to that drivel from the psycmask. I actually knew that the grass was greener on the other side. I just didn’t know where it was, where that grass was greener – where that other side that I was looking for, was. I just knew that someat was wrong in this place, and this place isn’t the same as other places and maybe I could do someat about it, rather than just accept the humdrum as gospel – like I had been brought up to do.

One day, after another twelve hour shift lugging another cart up and down that hill, instead of heading to the pub, I went straight home. I took off me psycmask and felt a wave of freedom come over me, free from the chattering of the hive and the constant ads and infotainment.

Back then, those psycmasks were full head affairs, not the slim fit models that we have today – well mine is, obviously, yours is a bit chunkier Pip. But back then, they were real headbangers – Anyway, I knew that I wouldn’t survive long without one, I’d likely suffocate, since that was what we used to breath. But without that constant chatter and augmented view of the world, I could see and think freely for a change, and that, at that moment, was more of a prize than breathing. It was a first taste of freedom, a glimpse of a place where the grass is greener. But of course, I knew that I needed a supply of air, even if I didn’t want the liquid feed. I wanted to eat solid food, wasn’t sure if my body could handle it, but that’s what I wanted to do, I wasn’t exactly getting fat on that biofeed; none of us did, I think the design was to keep us in a state of emaciation, of constant hunger.

I decided that I needed to modify the helmet to me own needs, which was to keep the breathing apparatus and nowt else. I didn’t want or need the infotainment or the hive chatter, so figuring that was delivered via the antenna at the back, I snapped it clean off. Placing the thing back onto my head, for the first time, I felt a blessed silence. My view of the world through the eye sockets was also clear – no longer augmented at all. All that remained was the feeding pipe, which I pulled out and Bob’s your uncle, a psycmask that did what I needed it to do, rather than it doing everything for me, like a mother does for an infant. I’d have to take it off to eat, but that was the least of my problems. Finding something to eat would likely be more of a challenge.

There was no scran in our kitchen; what with my parents and siblings varied comings and goings – according to the needs of the world we worked in and governed and fed by the psycmasks, there was no need for actual food to be stored anywhere – you simply collected your biofeed from one of the many community feed points: You collected your daily bread. There was nowt else to take, I would have to forage on my way and see how things went. I didn’t bother washing, my face and hands were black with dirt.

Maybe these days you’d call it a break-down, or depression of some sort, but at the time I was liberating mesen – I felt liberated. I had little else in the way of possessions – a torn old map of The Dark Peak’s closer villages, those not so far from the Damflask. I picked up a big old rust encrusted knife from the kitchen – not sure why it was there, but it was; and I had the clothes I stood up in – no more than rags. I bet you can envisage me, can’t you Pip? A shoddy vagrant tike I was.

And that was that, I was on the road and on my way out of Hellsborough, fast as my legs would carry me. I can’t say that I didn’t look back, because I did. I looked back at the place I was leaving with the kind of scorn I reserved for that hill that I pulled that cart up every day, and the kind of hatred that I usually reserved for… Well, I doant no what else, because since I said before, there was nothing I hated about the place, because what is there to hate when you’re just someone who gets on and does tha job and spends time with tha family and friends? – just grumbles, nothing serious, depression, distaste, malcontent – minor dissatisfaction – not hatred. It’s not until tha have left somewhere and come back that tha can see it with renewed eyes and considered experience. Back then, as I said, I just knew there was someat more, and I was going to do my best to find it, or maybe dee trying; but who thinks about death like that?

That’s when I met you, ain’t it Shad? Says Van reaching down beneath the table and patting a big black barker with raggedy fur that shimmered an emerald hue in the bar’s dull luminescence. The barker’s fierce canines protruded from his smile and he nuzzled Van’s hand – a knowing gesture indicating the two had been in each other’s company for quite some time.

Where was it we met eh Shad? In the Wisewood, wasn’t it eh buddy, that’s where it was. Tha was out there by thassen, ferrel as a monk tha were, chasing them damn scrufftails, weren’t thee? And we saw each other, me stumbling about through them bind vines and briars and thorns. I think tha thought I was some sort of shabby scrufftail mesen. So tha came at me like a crazed sun, quick as a flash taking a piece of me, a chunk right out of my hand. Look, says Van, raising his fist. After all this time, tha can still see the scar where he had me. You’d probably have had more if I hadn’t pulled that big old knife out on ya.

Took my own chunk right of thee and all, didn’t I boy – with that big old knife? And by the time we’d finished scrapping, I was so knackered-out that tha could have come and just ripped me throat out, but tha didn’t, did tha boy, tha just came and laid down by me as I laid back against that big old yew. There in that Wisewood we both fell asleep, didn’t we eh boy? Both exhausted we were Pip. That was all it took to tame him, wasn’t it, eh buddy boy?

Of course, that was before you passed, eh boy? Passing ain’t so bad though is it, makes no difference at all now, you’re probably even fitter now than tha was then, tha still keeps up with old Van. I think it’s me that’s the one who needs to be keeping up with thee more these days, eh boy? I still has the weight of this old carcass to carry around, tha were freed of that burden many a year passed.

That Wisewood, we didn’t make it through before murkfall, it’s a big old place that Wisewood. Didn’t worry Shad of course, but for me, that was my first time away from home and I’d never experienced darkness for what it is. When tha wears a psycmask day in and day out, even the sleepy time isn’t full on blackness like what I experienced then. I didn’t know darkness until I was out there in that Wisewood. There is noises in there too that tha wouldn’t ever expect to hear in a lifetime, no matter a single neet. And blackness. Blackness so dark, tha couldn’t see your hand in front of tha face.

I guess that is what made me what I am, ey buddy? That first neet in that Wisewood forged me into this, the man I am today. Hah, whatever that means. Them demonspawn though, they came for us that neet, didn’t they boy?

HMM::OUT(‘Scrufftail’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.20.5.5

HMM::IN('..Colour: Grey / mottled brown_

..Diet: Seeds, nuts, eggs_

..Size: 10" (thumb)_

..Defining characteristics: Bushy tail, clever_

..Class: Vermin_

..Image: Incoming_---')

CHAPTER 2

HMM::OUT(‘Explain the hinge’)

ask:: unknown // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:142j:i618 [loc::hellsborough//unknown__location//000]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.19.26.54

HMM::IN('..The hinge is the gateway to a parallel universe_')

:Where is the hinge?

..The hinge is located at 53.4023191236262, -1.501041553565726_

:Can I pass through the hinge?

..Unknown_ ..Only person known to pass through the hinge is Pip Rippon_

:How does Pip Rippon pass through the hinge?

..Unknown_

Demonspawn and Dirty Leaves

Van is on a roll and I’m keen to hear more, so I don’t press too hard.

I’ve learned to get anything juicy out of Van – there’s no need to rush; his story will manifest itself sooner or later – usually sooner, and played out in conjunction with a cribbage hand.

Run of four. Four in the box, thanks for the gift, meself… Yeh, they came for us good, them mardy bloody-minded demonspawn. No place being out there in the Wisewood, they should be in fields – penned in. But we survived, didn’t we eh buddy boy?

Has I said Pip? I don’t think I has. When I’m out and about in The Dark Peak and I sees them demonspawn in the distance – even now, knowing what I know – they makes me blood boil. Scream in me head I do – Demonspawn! Demonspawn! I don’t let my face show it, but that’s what me head is saying. I have so much hate for them things, I’m spittin’ feathers, I’m seeing red, just because I see them on some distant pasture. I don’t hate much, Pip, but them demonspawn I hates them with a vengeance. It’s been a long time, but even now I’m barely in control of my distaste for them creatures.

Which means – I say, in a moment of hubris – you’re not in control, are you?

I hate them things to their vile core, to my core. Demonspawn clovenfoot. Mindless creatures, the dullards of The Dark Peak. Cantankerous, messy, sinister. Evil. They’re not, they can’t help ’emselves, but they are.

Van takes another long suck on his pipe and downs a hefty mouthful of ale – a gobfull, as he’d say. He’s struggling to focus, I reckon, but still pretty coherent, it’s almost like he’s in some sort of hypnotic trance, but not quite:

It’d been dark for a while and we’d been in and outa sleep a bit, I remember. All those noises that are the Wisewood at night were going on and on. We ignored them though, me and Shad. Cuddling up we were, waiting for the murkrise, trying to get some kip. Floating in and out of consciousness, of dreamsleep. Nothing to fear here, nothing to fear here, that’s what I kept telling mesen. Was probably saying it to Shad ‘n’ all, ain’t that right you moochie old skriker?

Then they were there, them demonspawn. I couldn’t see them, but I knew Shad could. And it were cold. So cold, that’s why you could feel their breath, and the frigid heat coming off their flaccid bulk as they blindly ploughed their way through that impenetrable undergrowth. Couldn’t see ’em, could sense ’em, and that’s probably scarier than seeing the damn things. Knowing the repulsive things are there. But I couldn’t see ’em. I felt ’em though. Smelt ’em. Heard ’em. Deep guttural lowing, cloven hoofs, duneweed and twig fall and fallen tree leaves crushed by their trampling.

It’s the smell, Pip. If I sayed sulphur, you’d know, but that’d be easy, that’s stinkegg. This weren’t egg. This were death. The stench of a month dead track discarded grizzler. And that blood smell – when meyt bleeds out and leaves the blood behind and that blood matures for a day or so, that smell; it’s the stench of the dead: Of decay. That’s your demonspawn. Mindless dullards, forever wandering murkwits; perennially lost. They mull about in bad dreams and terrorise waking thoughts.

That stench. That decay. I think that night in the Wisewood, I soiled mesen. I soaked my mesen at least. I puked n’all, or at least dry heaved, since me belly was empty. But apart from them involuntary functions of the self, I was frozen. Could barely move. Me mind whirred; I couldn’t comprehend what was going on, and what, if anything, I could do. I was scared stiff Pip.

I remember this – I don’t know why I remember, but I do – I remember pulling Shad close with one arm and biting down hard on the first thing that I grasped with t’other – something to keep me quiet and stop me teeth chattering – I was trembling like a smelting barker. Pip?

Van stopped talking and eyed me directly. It seems to me that you might have a question for me? He said, observing my expression. The question (and those eyes, those piercing eyes) made me jolt, spilling tiny sloops of ale onto the table. I hastily mopped them with my sleeve, for no other reason than to waste some time and gather my thoughts.

What did you bite on? I said as I recovered.

Could’ve been owt, but I reckon it was a sapling that had shot up from forest floor. Like I said, it was blacker than black out there. After that, I remember nowt of what you would say was tangible.

A bit like now, I thought to myself. But Van had already moved on. His search was now for something of more interest than me – his part time temporary biographer. He had renewed interest in things other than his life story.

His left eye gurned with something like recognition. Hah! That clown over there, I know her, he said. She’s Pandora: Pandora of Hathersage! He wasn’t discrete with the volume of his exclamation, the whole bar – it seemed – turning in his direction; but the thud thud of the music soon drowned out whatever chatter Van’s shouting had prompted.

I know this too; I’d already recognised this clown as one of the Hathersage performing troupe. They’re a seemingly informal bunch, and will perform anywhere and pretty much do any sort of clowning that you’d expect – magic tricks, busking, joke telling, general clowning around, miming, you name it. There’s a reason for that, I know. Whilst they’re performing, whilst they’re entertaining you and yours, they’re also observing, taking notes, recording: People they see, interactions they witness, movement of goods they chance upon, that sort of thing. These clowns you see, this Hathersage troupe, are spies.

Yes, spies.

They survive in Hellsborough performing for scraps. Scraps of anything - food, drugs, drink, information. Information is the most valuable, obviously. Why? Why do you think? Because information is tradable. Little snickets of information, things noticed here, interactions observed there. Information can be traded for better bits of information – Better secrets. Bigger secrets. More information yields deeper and more important knowledge. More little gems that further the cause.

What cause? You ask. Any cause that betters the clowns. For The clowns only exist for their own kind, their own tribe, their clan – not for the crosslanders, not the jellyheads, and certainly not the nascenti. No, clowns is clowns, and clowns act in the interest of clowns and clowns alone.

It’s not just information though. They move things – physical goods. Drugs, parts, weapons – between different cells of the resistance, or the different empires – whatever side to wherever you need. Clowns have no favourites, they have no fear, and they have no compunction to take sides. To be clown is to be mercenary – You pay what they ask, and they don’t ask questions.

Put simply, clowns are the courier service of Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, and as if reading my thoughts, the hivemind chimes in with an ad of its own:

HMM::IN(‘Call 333 555 333555 333 555, ask for Penny, Pandora…’)

hits:: 9624155 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.21.7.0

..Pietr, Piers, Ptol or Pal: Any package, any place, any time. No questions asked, no package too small (or too large), nothing turned down. We see you right, tell us what you need, we deliver. We always deliver.

I’ve seen that number on a sticker on a rubbish bin somewhere too.

My knowledge of Pandora and the clowns seems to be vaguely in tune with those of Van. He now casually discards observations from his past experiences:

Pandora of Hathersage, hah. She’s all skin and bones, ain’t she? All skins and bones, says Van. Why does tha study her so intently Pip? A couple of generations ago, they were a proud species, rulers of The Dark Peak. Look at them now: Debased, a poor reflection of their former glory. Hathersage. It was the centre of the universe. Them clowns now, they’re just parodies of what they were – if her mother saw her now, she’d turn in her egg.

Hah! Hah-thersage! They’ve returned to type, no more caring about the wellbeing of The Dark Peak, like they did. Now just caring about their own selfs. They was saviours, now they is parasites – like the nascenti prey upon the jellyhead. Makes me sad, it does. Make’s me angry. What’s the youth come to, ay? Van huffs up a gob of phlegm, depositing it on the quarry tiles. A blackworm, crawling out from the grout and grime, feeds soundlessly on the green. Shad makes short work of both, settling down with a grin.

But they are mercenaries, right?

They wasn’t Pip, says Van. Back when I knew them, they were the opposite of mercenaries. The clowns were the rulers and the gods of The Dark Peak, huge in number, they kept the nascenti and the xin in check. Then I brought the Hatherans and the xin together, but that was a while back now. They’ve suffered as a species, I don’t doubt. Now, they cling to life – like Pandora over there, forever playing catchup with the might have been and the once before – look at her, all skin and bones she is, all skin and bones.

What Van is saying is news to me. My only experience of the clowns, has been – if not bad, then not good either. Yet Van talks of a time not so long ago when the clowns were rulers of a land not so far away from where we sit now. And that makes me wonder what happened in this couple of generations since Van worked whatever magic he did in these tales he is telling me now, but it’s early days yet and so I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

Pandora’s having an animated conversation with a xaexs on that table over there now. She – the xaexs – is an unusual sight in Hellsborough, she walked in a few moments ago. She hasn’t even gone to the bar yet, going straight over to the clown and the crosslander. To my reckoning, something is seriously afoot. I’m keeping my eyes on these three, could be that there’s trouble brewing hereabouts.

Van, relaxed as ever, is dealing himself a couple more crib hands; yet, I know his eyes are watching – he monitors things closely, even if you don’t think he is. He takes another long slug on his pipe, his pupils following the vapour as it trails upwards in spirals.

Hey, hey, you got some of that pretty green? Shouts Van, suddenly twisting around and looking directly at Pandora. I need a hit love, someat to speed me up a bit. Getting slow in me old age, you got some fruit, murker?

Pandora ignores him.

I’m sure I detect a flaring of her nostrils and a sneer, which I didn’t expect. I’d have thought a clown would be all over a request like that like a rash, but she knows who Van is – I get that now – and for whatever reason, that means disdain.

A line, just need a sliver, continues Van. The xaexs seeing Pandora’s sideways looks, breaks away from their conversation, and pivots towards Van. It’s a pivot that scares me, like you’d expect from some sort of automaton in the off-world. Alien. Somehow. And I’m thinking: This is not a good sign.

I feel uneasy. I’m not someone who starts fights, and no-one in this bar is going to ever defend themselves against a xaexs. This one stands 8 feet tall and has two sets of fully developed and very muscular arms – she is nothing if not intimidating. I don’t tend to swear, but there’s only one word that is front and centre of my mind – it begins with C and ends in L! (which might not make sense if you’re not from around these parts, but what I mean is: Chuffin’ell!)

I’ll tell you more about the xaexs, it might provide some context. Just think Samurai cockroach. Independent, disciplined, well trained, hard to kill and – utterly, utterly – ruthless. That’s a xaexs. And this one, as I said, is with a clown and a crosslander, and they’re talking in shallow clicks and whispers. What they’re discussing, I can only guess.

The xaexs are, like the clowns, by my approximation at least, mercenaries.

From what I know, they’re fairly small in number, but since they are such effective combatants, you don’t need many of them to do a lot of damage.

Van would be able to tell you more, and he will if I ask – assuming he’s coherent – but I’m pretty sure the xaexs are related in someway to the dyapnids. They’re both insectoid at any rate. But then so are the clowns, not that you’d ever guess, since they resemble humanity so closely. But whilst the dyapnids are more likely to be found in huge groups – swarms, I suppose – the xaexs are rarely ever seen together. They operate alone. Silent killers. If you need a job doing, so the saying goes, hire a xaexs.

I once heard a story – for a change, it didn’t come from Van – about a xaexs contracted to destroy a nascenti communications cluster – an organic network hub for all of the incoming communications from the various plants and fungi that the nascenti use to monitor and control their jellyhead underlings. The communications cluster was staffed by forty three exacids. Exacids are the nascenti’s muscle, their security guards. Their bouncers and enforcers. There was another four nascenti who ran the cluster during murklight. Maybe the numbers are wrong, who knows, it’s a story after all, it’s probably embellished to make it sound better, but then, when I think about it, maybe it isn’t…

Anyway, let’s say the numbers are correct. This xaexs, the story doesn’t mention her name, breaks into this communications cluster – evading all of the security systems – and they’re pretty sophisticated, if you know what I mean? I mean, this bit baffles me, exacids and nascenti have all of the benefits of a hivemind and the organic network, and still this happens – incredible. But then, the xaexs is also plugged into the hivemind through her breeding as well, so I guess being an off-worlder, I just can’t fathom it so well. Anyway, the xaexs gets into the perimeter and the main building of the hub undetected by the exacids, kills the four nascenti officers who are maintaining the facility – injecting them all with a poison straight through that heavy carapace of theirs, killing them instantly.

The data in the network hub is then scrambled by the xaexs, so that it’s of no use to the nascenti without a time based quantum code dependent on the temperature of the murk at the point it was compromised. Of course, this code is believed to be simple and easy to remember, but whoever tries to enter the code to unscramble the data, gets just a single chance, or the data is wiped – forever. It doesn’t matter that the nascenti have the data backed up, because by chaining the data by its relatedness to the organic world, once the source data is scrambled, so are all of the replicated versions. Using a backdoor only known to this xaexs, she then uploads the data from the cluster to an encrypted server held by the crosslander resistance.

Apparently, that was that. If you wanted more technical details, then I am definitely not the one to ask, but I’m not sure who you would ask either, or rather who I would ask, since the technology here is so different to that in the off-world. Organic technology is so dissimilar to that silicon stuff that you find at home.

Then the xaexs, she’s gone. Out of the communications cluster, over (or under, maybe through, who knows?) the perimeter, and away. An alarm wasn’t raised for another six hours until a change of shift was due and the outgoing nascenti failed to leave. And that’s pretty funny, because if exacids had a sense of smell, they’d have noticed much sooner. Maybe they should also get a jellyhead guard or two on staff, since the stench of four dead nascenti after six hours – in this mumid (that is, this humid, murky) climate – is apparently nothing short of putrid.

At this point the xaexs has already been paid half by the crosslanders for the initial sabotage, and as per their agreement, they owe her the other half because they now have the data. But the xaexs has the passcode for the scambled data, so she can blackmail the nascenti should she wish to, which will effectively render the copy the crosslanders have redundant, since the nascenti will know what it is they have. Of course, the data could be useless intelligence, who knows, but are the crosslanders prepared to take that risk, or do they just pay the other half? The xaexs in the meantime, has decided that it’s in her best interests if she just sells the information she holds to the highest bidder.

Ey up pal, didn’t see you there, says Van as the xaexs swivels on her pivot, how’s it going you sun?

I’ve never seen a xaexs smile, they don’t tend to have what you’d a call smiley face. At least not one that a human like I can discern. But the xaexs seems to be content: She hasn’t automatically removed Van’s head, and that’s a good sign. With her right second arm (leg?) the xaexs reaches beneath her – carapace, her epidermis, like she’s reaching into her own gut – and retrieves a small baggy of shimmering yellow-green goo with those delicate pincers of hers. Standing to her full height, she takes a single stride, handing the baggy to Van.

Much obliged, Dirty Leaves, says Van with a toothy smile, the xaexs chirps something back in her own strange tongue.

What she said, I have no way of deciphering, there was no violence – quite the opposite. The xaexs does something of a half bow, and then turns back to the clown and returns to her seat where they continue their chitter-chatter.

What did she say to you? I asked Van.

She just said, there you go pal, enjoy.

And what did you call her, it sounded like ‘dirty leaves’.

Yeah, that’s her name.

Dirty Leaves?

Yeah, well that’s as near as a translation as tha’s ever gonna get.

Van carefully pours the shimmerating gook onto the table. With no ceremony, he snorts the squirming mass directly up his left nostril. Lolling back in his chair, his eyes roll back into their sockets. Twin full moons, if such a thing existed in this world, or the off.

When you have experienced the things that Van has, I don’t think that’s unreasonable behaviour. To have developed a massive capacity for drugs and drink in the way that he has, that’s normal isn’t it? A normal way for the human mind and body to accept trauma? A coping mechanism. I do wonder if it’s within the human capability to be able to do what he does though. I can’t even come close.

That is the finest crust in all of The Dark Peak, hah, in all the world, says Van with vigour. Then he regains some semblance of normality and realises where he is: Oh, sorry Pip, I didn’t save tha none. Did tha want to slip a bit?

I really have no idea what he is talking about – crust? Slip? Nah no, I’m good.

Rockcrust, Pip. Everything is possible, it’s subliminal, I fell in love with it many a time past. It only grows here, try it, tha can’t get it nowhere else. I can get some more, it’s fine.

I’ll pass for now – but what is it, this rockcrust?

Moral worth, Pip. Existence. The cause and the course. The will of Dunlockslyn: Scerm. Listen. Does tha hear that? Does tha hear the silence?

I have no idea what Van is waffling about.

The fragility Pip, tha grok? It’s murk immersion. Not just the thick oily ether that tha thinks about when tha looks out of that window there, it’s the consciousness of it. The livingness, the deathness – the being. It’s Scerm: The afterlife, the out of body floaty-time; it’s everything tha expects the murk to be, it is, what it is.

Wahaha..huh! Studdered Van, it’s visceral Pip. You sense it, its being, its essence, its dirty stink, the crashing of its noiseless gongs as they reverberate through your soul. This is us, he stabs the bottom left of the table with his index finger. This is the murk he says, stabbing the top right. This is the murk where the Dun flows through the Ripperthroats: There is nirvana – where life returns to the sand.

That is crust. That is what tha gets when tha slurps the slime Pip.

Later, I researched it a little more. Slime, crust – rockcrust – is a type of lichen found only in The Dark Peak.

The denizens – the clowns, the xin, xaexs, the nascenti, maybe the fungal network, synthesise it into this faster moving organism, this embodiment, as Van put it, of the murk. This is nothing like any drug you can get in the off-world; this is not like heroin or cannabis or crack. Rockcrust seems more like a “smart drug” – an integral experience, it takes your further than any powder or pot can ever take you. My own frame of reference might be psilocybin, which would make sense here as well, with the fungal network being what it is.

A crickerjack lands on the table. Van blats it with the heel of his palm, sending its backside through its brain; he picks off the legs and wings and feeds them to Shad. What’s left of the cadaver he pops into his mouth, biting down hard and crunching loudly.

Reading my thoughts, Van posits his own analysis: Tha’ll never get crust in the off-world. Can’t happen. Tha ingests a living creature whose only purpose is to take tha to places that only exist in the nether. Crust transverses dimensions. Time is a useless construct of the off-world. The murk is quantum. Tha see forwards in time, tha see backwards, tha see what has happened, and what will happen, maybe what will never happen. How can tha ever know?

That was the last coherent sentence Van uttered tonight, not that I fully understood it. Then he howled. I say howled. It wasn’t a sound I’ve ever heard come from a human before – but howl is the closest verb I can think of.

I fly, slurred Van. I am flutterby. I am mentiloth of xin: Death winger; venomtooth of hail and mist. I am mystic stinger of legends past, I am prophesy.

Van Shhh! I implore, but he’s too far gone and, he’s going to start talking about the prophesy. No Van, not the prophesy, it’s not safe. There’s little point in me saying anything, since he’s so far out of it, he can’t hear me.

Speaking about the prophesy is banned in Hellsborough, luckily the organic network isn’t going to pick this up from in here. But we’re in a public place, and this is a really bad idea. Anyone – any of the jellyhead bar staff – or the other customers, could shop Van for talking like this – and everyone knows Van Hallam.

First the xaexs, the crosslander and the clown, and now this; it’s not a risk that I’m comfortable with. I’m flusteredly calculating how I am going to get out of this bar and then out of Hellsborough before the authorities are alerted.

Maybe I worry too much, maybe I don’t. I’m just trying to cover myself. Friend, Van may be, but I am not prepared to risk my liberty because he is shouting his mouth off in a bar about some crackpot prophesy. And when I say risk my liberty, I of course, mean my life. I know what the prophesy is, and so does everyone else, that’s why its mention is forbidden – the overlords loathe it more than anything else.

Van is on his feet. Raise your chalice, he shouts, sloshing his ale about: Drink the blood of Dunlockslyn – the great curator, the bringer of life and the harbinger of death. I taste me mother’s milk, I feel the space, I feel the reality, the air, the vibrations, the rotation of the Earth, me every memory. Oh D’divi! I am ready for thee – I am primitive again! I walk tha muddy banks; I sail tha brackish waters to the Ripperthroats, to the end of the infinite, to the finality – my deserving after all this service, hail thee – the most noble creature in all The Dark Peak!

And now I have even less idea what he is going on about, but no matter, at least he’s gone back to talking about Dunlockslyn, which is accepted by everyone. No more of that prophesy talk Van, please.

Yet, sorry state that he is in now, the man is an iconoclast. A true lone ripperthroat in this strange and barely comprehensible world.

Pandora gets up from her seat, nodding at the xaexs and crosslander, who also start to rise. The toucan looking thing on the crosslander’s shoulder – it’s called a symbiot – eyes Van and clicks its bill. Its hands are not feathered and it displays a gesture to Van with its fingers. No-one else in the party pays any attention, but Van sees it and rabidly howls and gnashes his teeth.

The din of the bar and the heady infecting atmosphere say closure is close, but Van has more story to regurgitate, so we stay, rooted to our table as last orders are called by a klaxon.

HMM::OUT(‘jellyhead’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.22.59.33

HMM::IN('..Colour: Variable_ Pale through dark_

..Diet: Prepared food solution, fermented beverage_

..Size: 5 - 6'6" (feet, thumb)_

..Defining characteristics: Humanoid_

..Class: Worker_')

“Worker”, yeah. Slave more like.

HMM::OUT(‘Symbiot’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.22.59.45

HMM::IN('..Colour: Variable_

..Diet: Variable_

..Size: 3 - 7" (thumb)_

..Defining characteristics: Variable_

..Class: Familiar_')

CHAPTER 3

HMM::OUT(‘Tell me about dark matter’)

ask:: unknown // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:142j:i618 [loc::hellsborough//unknown__location//000]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.19.44.3

HMM::IN('..Dark matter is a form of matter that is believed to exist in the universe but does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, making it invisible to instruments that detect electromagnetic radiation. It is called "dark" because it does not interact with light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation_')

HMM::IN('..It is estimated that dark matter makes up about 27% of the total matter in the universe, with the remaining 68% being dark energy and only about 5% being normal matter that can be seen and interacted with. Although dark matter has not been directly detected, its presence is inferred from the gravitational effects it has on visible matter, such as stars and galaxies_')

HMM::IN('..There are several theories about what dark matter is made of. The most widely accepted theory is that it consists of particles that interact only weakly with normal matter. These particles are thought to have been created in the early universe and have been slowly moving through space ever since_')

:I've heard things about this movement of dark matter, that it's somehow leaving here, is that true?

.._ .._ ..Analysing_ .._ .._

:Explain more

.._ .._ ..Analysing_ .._ .._ ..Refer to previous conversation, the hinge_

To t’otherside o’ t’Wisewood

Van is now tripping like – in his words – a monk.

In his reverie, we’re starting to get to the nits and details, and as a professional, it’s my duty to stay and have one more for the road, as that final (and I’m really hoping it is the last one, I really am ready for my bed) drink is known.

(And after all the excitement of the crosslander, the clown and especially the xaexs, I’m really hoping that Van doesn’t invoke some sort of pally after hours drinking arrangement, which I’m pretty sure he has the ability to do around these parts.)

I’d bitten down on this sapling to stop me screaming. I’m sure I did stop, since I had the fear of Dunlockslyn in me, I doant think I’d ever been more scared in me life before then, than I was that neet. But I was paralysed, I couldn’t move. Whether it was fear, or what, I doant know. Tha knows, when tha’s a youngen, tha hears stories. All sort of tales about bogey men and trolls and that sort of thing. And then, when tha’s there, when tha has to face tha fears, all them sorts of stories start flooding back into tha ’ead. Tha knows they were just made-up nonsense. Tha knows that they ain’t true, that these ogres doant really exist. Don’t thee? Tha tells yourself that it’s all just make-believe. But I tells thee Pip, tha try being somewhere like the Wisewood, in murknight with tha body frozen to the spot, and tha mind full of monsters, and tha tells me, that tha wouldn’t be scared, because tha would. I’m pretty sure tha’d be cacking yersen, like I was.

I nodded stiltingly, since it was true, I would be messing my pants sure enough.

That demonspawn horde approached then, lowing in their murderous tones, mindless dumb demonspawn, crushing the undergrowth under their heavy cloven feet; their eyes burning dark red through the greyness of the murk. They were all around us, I could smell their odorous stench and hear their grotesque snoughing as they cleared their snouts and throats. The clattering and clanging as they sharpened their horns against one another in readiness for spearing mine and Shad’s soft flesh. Shad started to make a low growling sound, but this did nowt to stop them circling us. I could hear their throaty breathing and see the burning of them deep crimson eyes that showed no mercy, just coldness.

My mind wandered – if demonspawn are such mindless and abhorrent creatures, how do they act with such calculated cruelty…

Pip, pay attention! Says Van.

A low moaning come from the forest behind us then. And this may sound funny in some ways, but this ain’t Shad, this is someat else. This is someat far more heinous than Shad could ever be. And so I’m being circled by demonspawn about to skewer me on those horns and now I have a growl scaring the d’divi out of me as well.

But that moan – subsonic it was, I reckon – it reached the ears of them demonspawn, and all of a sudden, they was routed; they were fleeing in terror. Panic-stricken. Their lowing replaced by a strangulated screaming – nothing like their normal dimwitted bass tones. So frantic they were to escape from the unseen thing behind me and Shad that one of them ran headlong into a great unyielding beech tree, breaking its neck. It smashed into the undergrowth, where I could hear its laboured breathing, as the damn thing drew its final breath.

The sound which had frightened them demonspawn didn’t happen again, but it had been enough to start me thinking about what it was back there in the shadows. I still couldn’t move – held stiff as a board with my back toward whatever this was – the sound that had made them demonspawn stampede. Shad too was rooted to the spot, must ’ave been as tangled up as me; but tha’s a loyal boy eh Shad, tha always was weren’t thee, tha old pad? Says Van ruffing Shad around his scruff.

Van stops and stares up into a corner of the bar now. I’m not sure what he is looking for – if anything. Probably nothing.

Backflit he says distractedly, running his tongue over his lips – but it’s leaving, I can tell, it’s away to that dark.

He moves on leaving me none the wiser.

I reckon we was in someat of a predicament, he says, draining his glass, and inexplicably managing to get table service. Our tankards quickly being recharged with ale – not something I was hoping for.

A few times that night, I heard sounds behind me – movement, twig snap and the like, like we was being hunted – like a flatface hunts a gnawmard. Shad is bristling and on constant alert, but it all comes to nowt. In the end all the rustling and the leaf chop and the crackling, it all stops. Then the dew it’s rising, and it’s the still of them early hours. I don’t think I got no sleep – I was just left thinking about this place we was in, and still couldn’t move a muscle.

I has no idea what is causing me to not be able to move – I has a better idea now of course – and I was ruminating on it all night. Maybe them thorns has cut through an important nerve, I thinks, or maybe that sapling I had chomped upon – it could have drugged me with its sap, I reckon that’s what it was Pip. Course, it could be someat else, who knows what you can contract in that murk. All I knew was I couldn’t move, I was frozen to the spot. That night though, I hoped that whatever it was that kept me numb might fade away, or when murklight broke I’d be able to better see what t’problem was, and be able to sort it out.

I’ll tell you Pip, right then in that Wisewood, I feared for mesen. I don’t think I’d ever been more scared than I was then, bound to that forest floor. Surrounded by the murk and them tangled branches, with this unseen beast stalking me. Many a time in Hellsborough I’ve fought mesen out of some dark corner – out back of some lane or some shadowy ginnel that I shouldn’t have been in – or ran as fast as my legs would carry me when some feral animal had been in the streets in gloaming or after murkfall; but then I always knew how to escape, because I knew every road, every lane, every ten foot, every path, I knew well the lie of the land. Here, in this wooded prison, I had no way out, and only the coming of murkrise would give me some hope. All I could do was wait, with fear in me ’eart and buzzing in me ’ead.

And me mind that night, it played the worstest of tricks on me. Many a time I thought I’d be eaten alive by that beast in the shadows. I was awake and could hear everything, yet my body could do nowt to escape, or even move. I’m sure I might have died of fright only to be resurrected as some revenant, to forever stalk the Wisewood. I imagined mesen with me arms of twisted sharp briars, with legs of bandy ash and a scream in me throat.

And this monster - this me of me murknightmare - carried a big old knife in its bloodied and broken hand of thorns.

I’m listening to Van telling me this, and my first thought is of an ancient poem: “Brackenman of Wadsley Common”. The common is not so far distant from the Wisewood as the corvid flies, and Van’s description certainly bears a distinct resemblance to the creature of the poem – a cryptid from here or hereabouts:

“Bracken Man of Wadsley Common”. I researched it in Hellsborough library. Decide for yourself, but to me, it sounds very similar to what Van is talking about:

The Common at Wadsley was ever dark, ancient and sinister.

Its man of bramble, thorn, bracken and briar;

And no one scrambles over the sliding ganister

Bowed legs of ash, four arms of yew and perishing juniper

Down the precipices of its sides, with tangled roots

Swirling fronds of green and purple heather shoots.

So the old poem goes. “Witnesses” of the creature, according to the ancient legends, at least had the Brackenman of Wadsley Common with his half dozen arms and legs made from twisted and bendy tree stalks with his body as a tangle of bramble and briar.

In an account that I read doing my research, a middle aged chap – he’d been quite wealthy and of high standing, something of an engineer by all accounts, so a trustworthy type; not some fly-by-night who was likely to profit from some sort of supernatural tale. This engineer had been out for a few beers (and, if he’s like me and Van, likely several more after that) at the Star Inn on Fox lane and had taken the Coal Pit lane back across the common, heading for his home somewhere off the Stubbing.

It is extremely dark up there on the common, and this was a late Windstrom evening, so it had been dark for some time that night. The murk hung low and heavy, making it hard for this chap to keep to the path and avoid the rocky outcrops, of which there are many. He had fallen several times, bruising shins and other limbs, but had still managed to get as far as the standing stone circle, at which he paused for a while to catch his breath; he’d ascended to quite some height by that time.

The legend has it that whilst resting against one of the great stones of the circle, he was attacked by a beast that came forth from the centre of the circle.

The beast had a body of thistles and thorns, legs of bandy ash and arms formed from twisted briars. Its head was a gorse bush. Its eyes were the orange of burning coals.

The bracken man beast enveloped the exhausted engineer where he stood and encased him in those spiky arms of briar.

The engineer’s skin was punctured many times, causing him to almost bleed to death.

He was found sometime after dawn by a passing knife grinder. The engineer lay in the undergrowth in a sorry state, barely alive. His body – but not yet his corpse – had been picked over by scavenging slyfluffs and grizzlers through the night, and corvids during murkrise.

But that’s just a legend. The poor bloke probably just lost his way on a murkfull night and fell into a briar patch, succumbing to the thorns and passing out. I’m sure this is just me, thinking out loud, putting two and two together, and making 19.

Anyway, Van is still in full flow, but at least he is over the worst part, it would seem…

From then until midmurk, or the wee small hours at least, all was silence. Then, suddenly, the awful chatter of…

HMM::IN(‘Sleepytime story..’)

hits:: 94542 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.23.30.0

Once upon a time, in a peaceful forest filled with tall trees and chirping birds, there lived a little bunny named Benjamin. Benjamin loved to hop and play, but he also knew how important it was to get a good night's sleep.

Every night, Benjamin would curl up in his cozy burrow and close his eyes, listening to the gentle rustling of the leaves outside. He would take a deep breath and imagine himself floating on a soft, fluffy cloud, drifting away into a deep sleep.

As he closed his eyes, Benjamin could feel his body getting heavier and heavier, sinking into the soft earth beneath him. The sounds of the forest began to fade away as he fell into a peaceful slumber.

I wave my hand about in front of Van’s face to try and get him to stop, and he does with a puzzled look on his face.

This psycmask is telling me a sleepytime story, I can’t hear what you’re saying, how do I make it stop?

Well, just tell it you don’t want to hear it.

How do I do that?

What’s your psycmask’s handle?

Handle? I don’t know, I was just issued it by the council, they didn’t tell me about any handle.

OK, don’t panic. Oy, Shales-o shouts Van to the barman, what’s the default psycmask handle these days?

Shalesmoor looks up from polishing glasses, pushing his thick rimmed specs onto his nose. He likely wears them as a fashion accessory, there’s unlikely to be anything wrong with his eyesight in this place. There is a pause, and he seems to be asking himself a question, but what he is actually doing, I reckon is communicating with the hivemind – unencumbered by a physical psycmask, like I am forced to wear – his nanotech version is implanted. I see him looking over, checking the type of my mask.

There isn’t one, he says, even that one of yours uses the same version as me. Just say “skip sleepytime”.

Thanks. Why didn’t I think of that?

HMM::OUT(‘skip sleepytime’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.23.32.9

HMM::IN('In his dreams, Benjamin visited.._)

It’s stopped. Sorry Van, please carry on. He does:

From then until midmurk, or the wee small hours at least, all was silence. Then, suddenly, the awful chatter of the murkrise come into me ears, and then there came again from the dark shadows the sound of that moving thing, and a rustling of the leaves. The shock caused me convulsions it did. It was then that I broke off them bonds that had tied me to the forest floor. It was me mind, me will, that did it; not me muscles, because I couldn’t move even so much as me little finger. And I didn’t have much in the way of muscle neither. Then something gave, I felt as sick as a rooter, then there was a sharp click as if steel wire had snapped, and I stood with me back against the tree facing that unknown creature of the murk. Shad too, seemed to have more life in him.

Me heart was pounding in me chest, me rib cage heaving from exerting mesen so much. Me breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat running down me forehead. I pinched mesen and figured I wasn’t no revenant yet – I was still in the land of the living, even if I didn’t much feel like I was.

That weird moaning from the depths of the wood brought me back to my senses – quicker than you’d say Jack Flash I reckon. Tha knows I didn’t have much of a weapon, I’ve said that already, and I didn’t want to face this unseen thing, whatever it was. Even with Shad at my side, I didn’t fancy a face off with whatever this thing might be. I decided I should run off – and then the rustling sound happened again, so in the dark of the wood, with my imagination running riot – I was being hunted – that denizen of the murk was creeping up on me, stealthy like.

I needed to escape this horrible place Pip. And then, as the murklight began to seep through the blackness, I ran as quick as me legs would carry me through the trees and into an opening – a ley, a clearing in the forest. Not sure why, but courage flooded into me body and me veins. I felt strong, emboldened somehow. On the far side of the clearing, I stopped. Told mesen off for what now seemed to be stupid and unneeded mithering. I reasoned in me head that I had lain helpless for many hours within the wood, yet nowt had come at me. If only I was to think a bit clearer and apply a bit of normalness, then I would convince meself that the noises I had heard would have resulted from natural and harmless stuff. Probably just the wind in the trees. At that point, I felt kind of daft, it was just the breeze through the trees all the time, how could I be so silly – what a daft berk I was, Pip.

I had me psycmask on, but right then, the murk lifted and thinned out a bit, so I tipped it back and took a gobfull of air – the purest air I had ever drank, I reckon. I lifted my head and filled my lungs with it. Then, I saw stretching in front of me, the most phenomenal landscape. The best landscape in all of the world I reckon. We’re so lucky to live around here, Pip – yet few ever venture out as far as I did, very few.

Rocky gorges, jutted hills, heather-studded moorland, and I’m just starting out. The Dark Peak landscape – silvered mountains in the distance, strange lights and shadows upon hillocks and streams, and the spiky details of those stiff, beautiful gorse bushes echoing their vibrant yellow back against the murk. Tha ain’t lived until tha’s immersed thasen in The Dark Peak, Pip. It’s the glory of Dunlockslyn. No Hellsboroughite jellyhead can ever experience its splendour without surrounding thasen in its being, in experiencing the scerm of it. Pip, this is the most wonderful place in all of Dunlockslyn’s universe.

And then Pip – as I stood there with me eyes wide open, it was like I had caught a glimpse of some forgotten world. It can be extreme cold and utter darkness can The Dark Peak, but it can also be such a stunning place – so different to owt here in Hellsborough. So different to anywhere else.

Hah, Pip, so me and Shad finally passed through them remnants of the Wisewood, and into that vast and dangerous place that is The Dark Peak.

HMM::OUT(‘Jack Flash’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.23.39.3

HMM::IN('..Colour: Pale

..Diet: .._ .._ ..Analysing_ .._ ..Blood_ ..Carrion_

..Size: 7'6" (feet, thumb)_

..Defining characteristics: Humanoid, capable of huge leaps, breathes blue flame, glowing red eyes, metallic claws_

..Class: ..Analysing_ Revenant_

..Nicks: Spring-heeled Jack_)

CHAPTER 4

HMM::IN(‘Ladies, you tired of those bad hair days? Say no more! We got you covered with the perfect haircut that matches your face shape.’)

hits:: 81961 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.23.44.27

Yo, listen up! If you got a round face, we suggest a cut that adds some height and length to your face, like a layered bob or a long, side-swept fringe. If you got a square face, we got some dope styles that'll work for you too. Soft layers and textured ends will add some movement and soften up your angles. For all my oval face peeps out there, you're in luck! You can rock almost any cut, but we recommend showing off your bone structure with a long, blunt cut or a textured pixie. And last but not least, if you got a heart-shaped face, we got you! A layered bob or a side-swept fringe will balance out your features and give you a fly frame for your face. So, come through to our salon and let us hook you up with a fresh cut that's perfect for you!

Book Now, we don't sleep, cos you don't: 333 777 333777 333 777 -- Faranteeeeeees!!!

Murklight

Van had dropped off at this point, eyes closed, arms outstretched, palms upturned, like some meditating divinity.

His beer glass seemingly like his mind, was an empty void; as empty as the vastness of The Dark Peak. I alighted to the bar to recharge his glass, and mine, since I too had drained my vessel. Despite the lateness of the hour and our apparent intoxication, the re-fills weren’t questioned; if anything, they were welcomed, and apparently, free of charge. When I returned to the table, Van is playing out his crib hands against himself, and getting engrossed in a run culminating in a four and a jubilant fifteen-two. He accepts his recharged glass with thanks and slurps noisily at the foamy head. He pauses slightly to admire the played out cards laying on the table and then continues his oration.

The landscape was familiar and alien at the same time, purple heather and yellow gorse covering them moors. It was murkrise, and outcrops of gritty rock glistened in the drismal half-light. Down from where I stood was a low walled pen, much like tha might keep wooltards in. I was parched from nowt to sup and with no water in sight, not even a syke, I thought it best to make me top priority to do some exploring. This pen was the only sign of life hereabouts, so keeping low to the ground, since I didn’t know who – or what – was likely to be about, I made me way over to it. Me shabby clothes blended in well with the grey of the rock and the green of the moss and bracken, but I was pretty much out in the open, so I felt vulnerable I did.

I couldn’t see no doors, but the wall was only about four foot high, so I peeped over the top. What I saw was the strangest of things: It had a roof made of some solid material, but opaque and four or five thumb thick, but not of any material I had ever seen – it reminded me of webbing, perhaps from some giant spider; or maybe ice. Beneath it I could see several dozen big eggs, all round and pinkish-grey – like the colour of the sky at murkrise.

Five of the eggs had hatched and their contents sat blinking in the dull light. That may sound odd Pip, and maybe it’s a bit rude to say it like that, but had my stomach had anything in it, the sight of them things would have emptied it. They was all ’ead, with scrawny little bodies, short fat necks and six legs; greenish-yellow and warty, sweaty things they were, all covered in slimy mucus, which they licked at with their long curly tongues. There’s a word for how those tongues looked, some animals have a tail like it.

Prehensile? I said.

Yeh, that. They had what you said – pre-ensile tongues. I later learned they had two legs and two arms, with ones in the middle that could be used as either. Their eyes were like them you see on a fly, but on the sides of their ’eads, sticking out so they could be moved forward or backards: These toady fly things could look in any direction, or in two at once, without having to turn their ’eads. It was all a bit weird Pip, I’ll tell ya that for nowt.

HMM::IN(‘Yo, fellas! Are you tired of having a wack hairstyle that’s not doing you justice? Say no more!’)

hits:: 43987 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.23.56.58

Our crew of skilled barbers knows what's up. They're gonna assess your face shape and recommend the perfect cut that's gonna make you look sharp and on point. Whether you got a round, square, oval, or heart-shaped face, we got the skills to make you look like a proper gent.

For all my round-faced dudes out there, we recommend a cut that adds some height and length to your face, like a textured crop or a side-parted pompadour. If you got a square face, don't sweat it, we got you too. A taper fade or a slick back undercut is gonna give you that masculine edge.

And for all my oval-faced fellas out there, you're lucky as hell! Almost any cut is gonna work for you, but we recommend a classic side part or a short back and sides. And last but not least, if you got a heart-shaped face, we gonna help you balance out them features with a low fade or a textured quiff.

Book Now, we don't sleep, cos you don't: 333 777 333777 333 777 -- Faranteeeeeees!!!

Have I got bad hair or something? I must have. But then judging by the hit count and the content, most of the ladies must have retired for the night.

HMM::IN(‘Yo, fellas! Are you tired of having a wack hairstyle that’s not doing you justice? Say no more!’)

hits:: 43987 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.23.57.24

So, come through to our barber shop and let us show you some love. We gonna hook you up with the perfect cut that's gonna make you feel like a boss. Say goodbye to them bad hair days and hello to a fresh, clean look that's gonna turn heads

Have you finished?! I meant to say it to myself, but I must have blurted it out, because Van interjected:

Why is I not interesting enough? He said, clearly disgruntled.

No, sorry Van, not you – it’s this damn psycmask and these infernal infomercials.

Ah yeah youngun’, they’re a pest ain’t they, tha needs to rid yourself of that stuff, it’ll make you blind. Tha needs to find a way to stop them targeting thee, tha can distract it tha knows, put it off the scent.

I wanted to ask Van what he meant – how am I supposed to rid myself of this mask, or as he said, put it off the scent, but content that my outburst wasn’t meant for him, he’s already carrying on; I hastily try and concentrate on what he’s saying now:

Shad was ’ungry, he wanted to eat the little things and was whining and scratching at that enclosure. I held him back, afraid of what they might be, and young as they clearly were, what instincts they might have which could do one of us harm. More of the eggs were hatching as we watched, and we was both fascinated – which meant that neither of us noticed a dozen full-grown adults coming at us from behind.

They came on their mounts, soundlessly skimming across the heather. If it hadn’t been for the clanking of metal from the one out front, we’d have been skewered and that would have been me gone, but that dull clank made me turn me head, and there not ten foot from me chest was this ’uge spear.

Them hatchlings in the enclosure, they looked harmless now. This one now full in me face was ferocious, with tusks curving up to sharp points, ending near where its eyes would be, if it were human. I reckon this thing was about six foot in height and it sat on its mount like I’d sit on a onetoe, grasping the animal’s belly with its lower limbs. The hands of his two right arms held its spear low at its side; its two left arms were hanging out to keep its balance.

The mount itself was probably eight foot long and its head was all big compound eyes and long antennae. It’s six spindly legs were tucked under its belly, and it glided over the terrain like a syncarid, slowly beating them broad wings.

Behind the first, were eleven others, all looked the same, but as I later found out, they is all different – much like we are, eh, Pip?

With that spear aimed at me ’ead, I took the only route I could and scrambled across that webbed dome, my featherweight making it possible – D’divi thank the nascenti for their feeding – or lack of it! Once up and over it, I could see why I wasn’t followed. If my pursuers had tried, they’d likely have crashed down on their own young and crushed ’em. Lean as the build of the xin – as they are known – they is still massive compared to them feeble babies, and when you add to that the weight of their armour, they’d be too heavy for that delicate looking roof, whatever it is was made of.

Just like sliding on them icy ponds in the Rivelin, I made it to the far side without mishap, but turning saw Shad impaled on the shaft of that spear – such was his lust for them hatchlings, he hadn’t sensed that incoming danger. Part of me crumbled as I watched his lifeless body thrown to the floor, discarded like some soiled rag, but I had no time for tears, I had me own life to think of, and I wasn’t out of the line of fire yet.

The horde landed their mounts and lined up against the wall, looking at me with expressions I couldn’t work out – later, I realised that they were astounded by me fancy footwork.

They were talking in low tones I couldn’t understand, pointing at me and checking that their hatchlings hadn’t been touched. Seeing that I was, compared to them, unarmed, that must have made them look at me in a different light. After all, they had already despatched Shad whose teeth were far better weapons that anything I had.

Each of them was armed with half a dozen other weapons, as well as them big old spears. The one weapon which stopped me thinking about trying to escape was a rifle which some of ’em held, and I kinda knew, for some reason they were gonna be good at shooting with.

The xin, after talking for a short time, turned and flew away the way they had come from, leaving just one of them with me by that enclosure. The rest of ’em went about two hundred paces then stopped, turning back to watch.

The one who stayed was the one whose spear had so nearly had me, and did skewer poor Shad, who now lay lifeless in front of him. He was clearly the leader, and they had gone to where they were now at his command.

He dismounted, threw down his spear and arms, and came around the end of that incubator – that’s what that enclosure was, an incubator – towards me; unarmed and naked, except for the ornaments strapped to his body.

Naked? I asked.

Yeah, them xin have tough warty hides, and no real need for the clothing that we are used to – and you have to remember that that murk, because of the humidity plants pumping warmth into it is how they evolved to live; so they don’t need anything more than their armour, their weapons and the badges of honour that they wear that proves their rank.

Sounds similar to the military in the off-world.

Does it? Yeah well, if you say so, then I guess it is. Your soldiers are naked then?

No, they wear uniforms, I meant that the badges of honour that you talk about to show rank, sound like the insignia that the military in the off-world wear to show their rank: Major, Captain, Sergeant, Lieutenant and all that.

Yeah, sounds similar, anyway, when this xin was about fifty paces from me he took off one of the metal bits that he had had around his arm and held it out to me.

He said something in a clear and strong voice, but I didn’t have a clue what he was saying – the language was all over the place, and I didn’t understand a single word. Then he stopped and seemed to be waiting for me reply, cocking his head over to one side and pointing both of them swivelly eyes at me.

He’d killed me dog he had Pip, and that’s how I thought about Shad, even though I’d only known him for a few hours, me and Shad had a bond like I’d never felt with any other living thing in my whole short life back then. Yet this scary looking bloke seemed to be giving me some peace offering; not only was he ’olding out that bit of metal off of his arm, but he had also thrown down all his weapons and sent his mates – his patrol, I guess – way back so that they wouldn’t get involved. It was just me and him.

So I kinda did the only thing that felt right at the time, I puts me hand over my ’eart and says to him – in Ing – that I ain’t a clue what he was going on about, but the way he acted seemed like he was up for peace, and despite him murdering me dog – I pointed at poor old Shad – I was up for a bit of peace. I don’t think there was much else I could do anyway Pip, if I hadn’t been smiling, and instead had pulled out that big old knife, I’d have been toast, wouldn’t I?

When I pointed at Shad the fella looked over, and I thought I might have seen a little remorse in them odd eyes of his, but as for what I said, I might have been babbling like the Storrs brook for all I knew. I reckon it got the message across alright though. Because when I stretched my hand out towards his, and took his metal thing, he seemed sound enough.

I clamped it about my arm around me bicep – is that right, this bit.

Van correctly indicated his bicep muscle.

He’d had it around ’ere, he said, indicating his forearm, but he were quite a bit more muscular than I was. Then his wide mouth spread into a smile, and he locked one of his middle arms in mine, and we walked back toward his mount. At the same time he motioned his patrol to come towards us.

They started towards us at a wild run, but he told ’em to slow down with a wave of one of his hands. He presumably – and correctly – feared that their charge might be enough to make me run off, which I might well have done, taking my chances with them rifles of theirs.

He said a few words to his men, indicated that I would ride behind one of them, and then mounted his own beast. The one designated as my ride reached down two or three hands and lifted me up behind him, I hung on as best I could to his belts and straps.

I said to the one who I was now riding with to pick up Shad’s body – it was just a few feet a way – but the fella just grunted and kicked his heels into his mount, sending us forward and leaving Shad’s broken remnants exposed to the elements, in the heather and bracken at the base of that incubator that housed them hatchlings. I have to admit Pip, a tear welled in me eye then.

Where in The Dark Peak is this Van? I asked, as he came to a natural pause in this part of the story, counting his crib box and moving one of the pegs along the board by nine holes.

At the time of course, he said in answer, I didn’t really know, having never visited before, but later on my return to Hellsborough, I studied any map fragments that I could find that showed the area. There wasn’t much to go on, a scrap here, a ripped section there, but I decided that, as it was xin warriors that I found, and not nascenti, then I must have been in the uplands somewhere; which is, of course, pretty obvious when you think about it. The xin, being composed how they are, are creatures of the uplands, and their natural environment is the swamps, marshes and wetlands that are the sources of the rivers in the area as they drain away from The Dark Peak and head down towards civilisation. Well, our human civilisation at least, if you can call it that. If you asked me to put money of it, I’d say we were somewhere beyond the Lodge moor, but it was a long time ago and my knowledge sparse, so tha forgets and as time goes on those memories turn into false memories, rewritten with newer stuff – tha knows how it is.

But one thing I does know is that those mounts of the xin – they’re called mentiloth – they move with the swiftness of anything that I’ve ever experienced before or since. That made them powerful and fearsome allies, and I’d have many a battle against them in the years to come.

HMM::OUT(‘Xin’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.0.19.8

HMM::IN('..Colour: Light yellow-green (immature) through dark olive

..Diet: Mentiloth milk and derivative products, carrion, omnivorous_

..Size: 4 - 7' (feet)_

..Defining characteristics: .._ Amphibian_ .._ ..Analysing_ .._ ../|\/|\/_ Insectoid_

CHAPTER 5

HMM::OUT(‘The hinge has been breached by this Pip Rippon and dark matter is leaking out of Hellsborough, is that right?’)

ask:: unknown // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:142j:i618 [loc::hellsborough//unknown__location//000]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.20.17.14

HMM::IN('..Not enough data to give a formative answer_')

:assume statement true :What will happen because of dark matter leaving Hellsborough?

.._ .._ ..Analysing_

:Explain

..Matter attracts anti-matter, on contact, annihilation

Siltibog, Fenimoss, the dyapnid and the barghest

Looking at him, Van bears a striking resemblance to Nosferatu, the vampire from old films in the off-world – albeit, without the fangs. He is lithe and svelte, completely devoid of hair – on his head or anywhere else judging by his arms, and incredibly ancient. Of course, Van sees this as a sign of advancement, the hairless ape and all that, being better developed evolutionary and cognitively superior, but that’s just Van’s view, of course. Yet despite his advanced years, he is every bit the formidable opponent, especially when it comes to cribbage.

I’ve got qualifications coming out of my ears, but there’s something about that game – cribbage – that I just don’t get, something that Van understands that I don’t, and I’ll be damned if I can get it. He just always beats me at the final post, which is why I gave up playing against him and he gave up playing against me. One day, I’ll try again. I keep watching and learning. One day I’ll pluck up the courage to chance him again, and I will better him. But that day is not going to be this evening.

That beer that I went and fetched a while back, that’s gone. And another one after that. This one that we have now is finely crafted, and generously hopped, with peppery undertones – and again it’s hitting the spot. Van has been absorbed in his game throughout those last drinks, and I have been biding my time, just enjoying the quiet of the place and soaking up what’s left of the atmosphere – Shalesmoor, the bar guy, appears to be in no rush to close after all.

This evening is a drismal one, typical in Hellsborough, a place seemingly with its own ecosystem; so these last few drinks maybe weren’t such a bad thing. The wind is fair howling outside and Shalesmoor has taken to watching the flotsam and detritus blowing along the street and against the outside of the building. Occasionally, the leaves and litter and other assorted earth manure thrown up by the stormy weather stick to the window in clods. The two of them: Van and Shalesmoor, are used to this weather, as is Shad, and they bid it no notice, but for me it’s fearsome and I would rather be inside this bar than outside it, but then I am something of a fair weather tourist.

HMM::IN(‘Hexikid! Hexikid! Hexikid!’)

hits:: 42 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.0.23.54

Hexikid! Hexikid! Hexikid! Hexikid!

A hexikid street cleaner is slithering down the road consuming the muck and polishing the street in its slimey wake, its immense bulk pulsating amber, reflecting off the glass of the window; a brace of barker nip its chitinous shell – one was natural, a small breed, probably escaped from its owner’s house to run amok. Its furless companion was made, with a yap like a gabblerachet.

Van, noticing my mind wandering, draws me back in by continuing his story:

We had gone perhaps ten thousand paces when the ground began to rise up fast. We were near to the edge of one of The Dark Peak’s vast reservoirs, where my encounter with the xin had taken place. In a short time we gained the foot of the hills, and after going through a narrow gorge we came to an open valley. At the far side was a hidden xin village, which we glided towards on the mentiloth, entering the village by a bare and tatty track.

When I say village, it was no more than a camp really. Huts constructed from the stems of ash trees and tents covered in raggedy canvas. In the buildings of the camp were some nine or ten hundred creatures of the same breed as my captors, which I now thought I was, a captive, I mean – in my naivety I’d allowed myself to be trapped, Pip.

The women didn’t vary much to the men – their tusks were larger in proportion to their smaller stature, and they were lighter in colour, ranging in height from four to five foot. The children were light in colour, even lighter than the women, and all looked the same to me, except that some were taller than others; older, I reckoned. But then all kids look alike to me Pip, they always have, I guess that’s just my lack of interest in youngen’s.

There were no one about who tha’d say was old, and there ain’t any difference in their appearance from their age of maturity, about forty, until around two hundred, when they go on their last pilgrimage to the Ripperthroats. It’s like I say about us humans – that indeterminate age of a bloke between 18 and 65 – except that them xin live a darn sight longer than us humans do.

You excluded, I had to say (it’s the drink talking), but Van either didn’t hear me or ignored my comment.

Do you know the old poem? Said Van, looking at me quizzically (he had heard my comment, I saw, and he’d chosen to ignore it), picking up his pint and quaffing enthusiastically.

Old poem? I rifled through my mind for which one he might mean, there are several. The story of the Dun?

That’s the one.

Yes, back in the way back then, it was known as the dark river and there’s a rhyme about human sacrifices being offered to it:

The shelving, slimy river Dun, Each year a daughter or a son.

Yep, said Van, but not just human sacrifice. Tha’d think that we humans and the xin had little in common, but that dark river, that’s a shared experience. They think of it the way that we do. But tha knows, only about one xin in a thousand dies of sickness or disease, and maybe about twenty take the voluntary pilgrimage. The other 979 die in duels, or hunting, or fighting wars – but the biggest loss is in childhood, when many of them youngsters become victims of the murk – and whatever exists in there.

Tha knows Pip, them xin have remarkable skill in caring and surgery and are reyt good at healing ’emselves – and that’s a reason they consider life so lightly – that’s why they carry on the way that they do – their dangerous sport and fighting and whatnot.

Anyway, we neared what seemed to be the village centre, and we were surrounded by hundreds of the creatures who seemed anxious to pluck me from my where I sat. A word from the leader of the party shut ’em up, and we proceeded at a trot to what seemed to be some sort of community meeting space. The building was low but covered a large area. The main entrance was several paces in width and projected from the building proper to form a straw thatched canopy. There was no stairway, but a gentle incline to the first floor of the building opened into a large space with a gallery above for those who wanted a gander.

On the floor of the chamber sat around fifty of them in front of a platform. On the platform sat one who wore bright feathers on ’is ’ead, lots of jewels in his trappings, and a cape of dull white silk lined with some greyish fur around the edge.

Ooh pretty, I said, without really thinking what I was saying.

Yes, pretty majestic, I reckon, said Van, this was the chieftain of the whole clan, it seemed to me. That cape was a similar sort of material to that dome that I had skidded over earlier, and I later found out it was woven from the silk of a cryptobite. The fur was from a grizzler.

My captor had stopped and locking his arm in mine, he marched me into the chamber. The chieftain got to his feet and spoke the name of my escort, which I now knew was Siltibog. He chattered away to the chieftain and must have explained the results of his mission, including my capture. Some question that I didn’t understand was asked at me and I replied in Ing, even though I knew we couldn’t understand each other; but I noticed that when I smiled slightly, Siltibog did as well. This made me think that we at least had something in common – the ability to smile – possibly the xin had a sense of humour after all.

Haha, get this Pip – I was to learn very quickly!

The xin smile is a rather indifferent thing, and their laugh is not at all like ours – those green men’s ideas of humour is nowt like ours. They get their biggest kicks out of watching their fellow men die, find it wildly hilarious they do – but then, I have often said myself, there is nothing funnier that someone else’s pain.

Then Siltibog came toward me. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but I wasn’t long in finding out. The chieftain clearly wanted to see what I looked like behind my mask. Siltibog like a conjuror, his arms dodging left and right, distracting me, swiftly removed my psycmask, before I even had time to object or raise my own hands to stop it happening.

At this point, I gasped, and emboldened by the amount of ale consumed, I interrupted Van with a question. He paused his monologue and looked at me strangely, but directly in the eyes.

In answer to your question, he continued after a lengthy pause, nothing happened, at least not at first. They examined me closely, feeling my scrawny body and the texture of my smooth skin – a complete contrast to their warty hide.

It was only after several moments of being subjected to this manhandling, that I then began to wheeze heavily, and fear must have shown in my eyes, so that Siltibog returned the mask to me and with some trouble due to my now extremely laboured breathing, I was able to refit the thing onto my face. That restored some energy to my legs, I were trembling like a smelting barker – and then I did hit the ground, as my legs collapsed from under me.

I was roughly jerked to my feet again by a big fella who had laughed the most at my –

What’s the word Pip?

Predicament?

Yeah, that. He banged me down on me feet and bent his face close to mine, laughing at me. He didn’t scare me though, he made me blood boil and someat surged through me veins it did.

I would have to say that I’m a little embarrassed about it Pip, but I did the only thing tha might do – I steadied myself and swung my fist squarely at his jaw. He weren’t expecting that, I can tell yer – and if truth be known, neither was I, having almost been out for the count moments earlier, but as I said, someat was triggered in me, and after that first time of the murk almost taking me, I thinks that maybe I was getting used to it.

Acclimatised? I offered.

Bless you, said Van. Hah! And this one, he went down like a sack of spuds. I wheeled around with my back toward the nearest wall, expecting to be attacked by the rest of ’em – and I was going to give them a good feight, I was, even though I knew the odds weren’t in my favour and I knew I’d get a reyt pummelling.

It never happened though, the other xin, they was struck dumb with amazement, and they all started laughing raucous like and clapping they were. I didn’t recognise it at the time, but later, when I had become acquainted with the xin’s customs, I learned that I had won a minor victory, and a little bit of their approval.

Siltibog and the chief exchanged a few words, and the former, calling to a young lass, gave her some instructions and motioned me to go with her. I grasped her arm for support, since my legs were still a bit wobbly, and together we crossed toward a shack on the far side of the village square.

This lass was around three and a half foot tall, not yet her full height. She was of a light olive-green color, with a warty, dull hide. Her name, I learned later, was Fenimoss, and she was part of Siltibog’s extended family. She took me to a small room in the shack looking out onto the village green. There was sackcloth and fur all over the floor, and it looked like a few of ’em slept there.

Fenimoss indicated that I should sit upon a pile of sacks near the centre of the room, and then made an odd hissing sound, calling something from another room. The thing come in on its six short legs, and squatted down before her, just like a barker. It was about the size of a wooltard, but its head bore a huge pair of sharp mandibles – jaws as sharp as razors. Fenimoss stared into its wicked looking eyes, muttered a word or two, pointed to me, and left the shack.

I expect, said Van, you can imagine what my friend Shad here, to whom he pointed with a wizened index finger, thought about that thing!

I nodded trying to understand. But, Shad’s dead, I said.

At this point, that is very true, said Van. But you see, such it is that when we was out in that Wisewood and we was bound to its floor by them briars and the thorns, trussed up like animals, you could say, we became mighty close. Closer than just the physical closeness we already ’ad from bonding over our fight. This was more, this was a connection, some sort of meeting of minds, of souls maybe, if tha believes that they exist. Something happened out there, maybe it was that unknown creature in the woods, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was something altogether more supernatural than that. I don’t rightly know to be perfectly honest. All I does know, is that when Shad was killed by that spear, part of me was crushed, like part of my own soul had been ripped out.

Now Shad here, said Van, is a good and kind hearted creature, but he probably has the brains of a two year old child, human child, I might add. But deep down, or not that deep actually, he is a wild beast. Tha has to remember, it is not all that long ago in the scale of things that he was a ripperthroat, and it is only through training by us humans that barkers have become the kind hearted, obedient and loyal companions that we know them as today.

I nodded again, understanding where Van was coming from with this, but not entirely sure where he might be going, but urging him on all the same, to find out the next stage in the story.

So Shad here, just being a loyal and faithful guard to mesen he arrives in that room that night. I didn’t have a clue how he’d got into that room, nor even how he’d managed to follow me back to where I’d been taken, but then barkers are renowned for their sense of smell, so back then I put it down to that. And Shad, well he goes for the throat of this wooltard size thing which the girl Fenimoss has brought into the room. Shad presumably sees it either as a threat to me, or maybe he was just hungry, I thinks at the time. Or maybe, regardless of either of those things, he is just a barker and saw something that he thought in his two year old human brain might be prey and decided that his instinct was simply too much and he had to go and take a chunk out of it. I doant know. If barkers could talk, we’d know the answer to these things, but they don’t talk do they, so we’re none the wiser why Shad tried to take the head off this thing.

Caught by surprise, the creature – I later found out it is called a dyapnid – did not put up much of a fight – at first. It went down as if to Shad’s command. But its leathery hide must have been able to withstand Shad’s teeth, for after it had feigned death long enough for Shad to release his grip, the creature reared from the floor, and in a reversal of Shad’s attack, clamped its mandibles onto Shad’s neck and clean ripped out his throat.

It all happened so quick that all I could do was grasp poor Shad as he fell away from those razor sharp mandibles and cower in the corner over his body, as the last gasps left him – again, as it were. The dyapnid paid no heed to my sobs, simply staring into my soul with its listless eyes. But then the murk seemed to volumise in the shack, and Shad was up again and growing larger and more shaggy, his eyes the size of saucers, the colour of the moon. He howled madly at the dyapnid, and launched himself at it, his teeth ripping into its head. The dyapnid reared up to defend itself, but then under the pressure of Shad’s onrushing force, toppled onto its back, exposing its belly. Shad’s rabid teeth cut fresh wounds that squirted turquoise blood.

That was when I knew Shad was a barghest – an undead hound sent to protect me – and when he’s not doing that, get himself up to some serious haunting. I now knows we got this bond that was capable of crossing the void that lies between the planes of life and death, and Shad was just attracted back to me by this bond forged in the darkness of the Wisewood.

After that, Pip, said Van, draining what was left of another pint, my soul seemed to be restored for the better.

HMM::OUT(‘Dyapnid’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.0.33.49

HMM::IN('..Colour: Black_

..Diet: Insects, vegetable matter, detritus, carrion_

..Size: 4"' (hand, at shoulder), 5' long_

..Defining characteristics: Large mandibles, fast, denizens of a third kind_

..Class: Denizen_

..Image: Incoming_---')

CHAPTER 6

HMM::OUT(‘Why is this Pip Rippon character breaching the hinge, and why so often?’)

ask:: unknown // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:142j:i618 [loc::hellsborough//unknown__location//000]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.20.19.27

HMM::IN('..Thermal imprints suggest the movement of amorphous substance_')

..Frequency sporadic no linear pattern_

:Tell me more about this amorphous substance

..No data_

Snap, sup, sleep and slips

The dyapnid lay dead on the floor, and Shad huffed at its carcass making these guttural noises. He was making me nervous ‘nall, he was Pip. He stalked about impatiently. I called him over to where I was sat and put my arm around his neck, trying to calm him, but he was proper agitated an’ there was no soothing him. I never feared for my own safety with what was now a huge beast, but knew that this tremorousness –

Is that a word, Pip? Tha’s the educated one, tha sort it out.

No, I don’t think it is.

Anyway, his excitement, needed to be shushed, otherwise he might be minded to rampage through the camp and cause all sorts of damage, which wouldn’t bode well for our future safety, I were sure of that.

Shad’s anxiety quietened after a while, and I was able to have a good look about me. The floor was covered with sackcloth, silks and furs, but there was no furniture or owt like that. A picture hung skewly on the wall opposite me, it felt completely out of place, as if it had been taken from somewhere else – maybe it were a spoil of war; this was the only example of any art I had seen since I’d been brought to – what I now realised, was my prison.

I know what tha’s thinking, Pip – I’ve only been here a few hours, how could I make such a rash statement. But I tells thee why, Pip – if tha was in the presence of this warlike race, tha’d have thought the same. Tha just knows when someat ain’t reyt, and this piece of art, slung casually from the wall of a ramshackle shed, were out of place.

I’m not saying that there is no xin with an artistic bent, because maybe there may have been one of them in all those fierce warriors – later, I thought that maybe Fenimoss could have had the sensitivity to paint something so beautiful, but she was still young, so that thought never entered me ’ead then. No, this piece of art, was definitely not xin, it was alien.

I continued to look at that picture for clues as to my whereabouts – mountain and hill, river and lake, moor and marsh, the deep foreboding sky of The Dark Peak.

Fenimoss come back with what I assumed was snap and summat to sup. She put ’em on t’floor, and sitting down a little way off, looked on as I took a gander at what she’d brought. I was hungry and thirsty, but not being used to solid food, and unsure how to eat it – I had always taken my food via the psycmask’s feeding pipes – I took a little while to figure out what was what, despite the hunger crawling about me stomach.

There was an hefty lump of some solid substance – that I’d now know as cheese. It were almost tasteless. The liquid was apparently milk from some animal, which was more familiar to me, it being a liquid. It was not unpleasant to the taste, slightly salty, and I learnt to prize it, it filled me and took away them pains of ’unger. Both products come, I later found out, from the females of those winged xin steeds, the mentiloths.

At this point, I felt I needed to stop and ask a question, something from Van’s story was playing on my mind and I just couldn’t let him continue without asking:

Was Fenimoss not concerned by the dead dyapnid?

Van answered quickly.

It’s the strangest thing, that, he said. The xin have this ability to ignore and not even notice death. It’s just not something that ever comes onto their radar. They’re a focused race – and as I’ve said already: Warlike and bent on destruction, and to them, death is cheap – or at least the price of life for the xin is very little. So she entered that room, looked at the dead creature – she didn’t see Shad at all – and saying nothing, nothing at all, just accepted the fact that the dyapnid was no longer on guard and was, well, dead, and offered me the food. Not once did she ask me what had happened or why, she just carried on as if nothing had happened at all.

Can I carry on? Asked Van. I indicated for him to continue.

After I had eaten I felt a darn sight better, but I needed to rest, I were shattered. I stretched out on the sacks and fell asleep.

I must have slept for ages, but when I woke up, I was freezing – them nights in The Dark Peak are reyt cold and I was proper nesh. I noticed that someone had thrown a fur over me, but it had fallen off and in the darkness I couldn’t see to put it back. A hand reached out and pulled the fur over me, then stuck another on me.

I presumed that my watchful guardian was Fenimoss, and I weren’t wrong. This girl alone, among all the green xin who I’d come in contact with, showed sympathy, kindliness, and affection unlike any of her race; her care for me was reyt proper, and she saved me from much hardship.

The xin are a nomadic race and doant go in much for schooling or owt like that, a bit like me really – they tend to live off their wits most of the time. Because of that, they only have crude lighting; relying on torches and candles – they can render them from the fat of their animals – but they doant use ’em that much as they’re not easy to make, so they hardly ever bother. Them xin, their only thought is for today, and they’d rather go to war for what they need, rather than do any manual labour. That’s what’s kept them in their semi-barbaric state – they’re not lazy as such, they just doant want to do nowt but fight.

After Fenimoss had covered me up again, I slept, not waking until the weak morning light began to melt into the room. I could now see other shapes in there – five female xin, all still sleeping, piled high with sackcloth and furs.

I’m an adventurer, you know that, I can’t help mesen, and I has to investigate and experiment where wiser folk would do well to leave alone. I just can’t seem to help myself exploring an alley or ginnel and taking the pathway less trod to see where it goes. In the same way that I pour over maps, I has a need to picture where I am, so I know what leads to where and what connects with elsewhere.

HMM::IN(‘Background music: Uplifting and adventurous tune. Aerial video, moorlands, rolling hills of The Dark Peak’)

hits:: 49 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.0.54.11

Escape to a land shrouded in mystery, where rugged beauty and untamed wilderness collide.

Image: Hikers on scenic trail.. waterfall.. wildlife..

Welcome to The Dark Peak, for nature lovers and adventure seekers.

Image: Climber on rocky peak.. cyclists..

Unwind and indulge -- where comfort meets nature.

Image: Sunrise over The Dark Peak..

The Dark Peak. Discover the magic. Experience the adventure.

This was a public utility broadcast by The Dark Peak District Council.

I decided I needed to learn about my surroundings and it would be good to get out this prison room while I had a chance, so that’s just what I did – got mesen out to see where I was and what was about. I got out to the edge of the village and scrambled up into the branches of a tall fir tree to try and get me bearings.

I hardly got above the murk when a xin warrior sitting high on his mentiloth jabbed his spear at me. Shad, launched himself into the air and took a chunk out of the mentiloth’s undercarriage. That frightened the thing and it bucked wildly, not unseating its rider, but unsettling him enough so that his spear was no longer on target.

But that mentiloth’s wing hit the branch where I stood, and that was enough of a jolt to knock me off. As luck would have it, I didn’t fall into briars and thistles, but a deep pile of leaf fall, and that spared me from any broken bones. I was still battered and bruised though Pip.

It turns out that when Fenimoss had woke and found me missing, she had gone straight to Siltibog. He had raised a search party and easily found me, not that I was trying very hard to remain hidden. Fenimoss had tagged along and so now come to me, examining me body for injury. Satisfying herself that I’d survived unscathed, I saw her smile quietly to herself, and taking me hand, she led me back toward our shack.

Shad trailed behind at a distance; I’m pretty sure he’d be keeping a wary eye on them xin warriors, but I think he sensed I were ok with Fenimoss, so let me be. I found this to be the way with Shad – he would stay away, but should I ever need him, all I would do is whisper “cam-ere” and he’d be there. That’s not to say that I didn’t hear of the odd story of him up to some haunting here or thereabouts in The Dark Peak, and my suspicion is that he frequently returned to the Wisewood as well as to grimy streets of Hellsborough for his own ghostly and demonic entertainment.

It was with the last story that Van drained his glass, and yawning widely, started to make his excuses for leaving. The bar was empty, save for myself, Van and Shalesmoor the bar man, and had been for quite some time, not that Shalesmoor, who was paid by the moment, minded – he would keep the place open for as long as you wanted him to.

Van was looking decidedly grey, and knowing that we could continue his story telling tomorrow, I did not try to continue this evening – although I hoped that we would get some more good meat for his biography then.

And so it was that we bade each other farewell, promising to return tomorrow afternoon after lunch to continue our discourse. Van headed towards his house on the corner of the crossroads, and I sleeping in digs out the back of Owlerton headed in the other direction up Middlewood road, needing to cross over Hellsborough park. A sign at the entrance to the park reminded me that wearing a psycmask was a good idea – not that I’d dare take it off:

PSYCMASK FOR SANITY (and this is the thing, the psycmask feeds your brain with advertising and hivemind chatter, but is promoted as being for your sanity, since not using one might make you insane)

– and I automatically went to adjust the way that the thing sat on my face; finding that it was sitting as snuggly as it is intended. It was dark in the park and the place surrounded by the thick suffocating murk, which made for a quiet and lonely walk, but the chance of encountering any unpleasantries was slim due to the inability to see more than a few feet ahead and the lateness of the hour. Yet I could still determine isolated pockets of chatter and the occasional laughter, which made me quicken my steps, just to be on the safe side.

I was pretty sure that I had a guardian though, because Van would have seen to it that I had. Every now and then I would hear a subtle sniff or some shuffling of leaves, but the noises never came any closer – Shad wouldn’t want to distress me unnecessarily.

HMM::OUT(‘Barghest’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//park//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.1.7.23

HMM::IN('..Colour: Black_

..Diet: anything, but inconsequential_

..Size: 5"' (hand, at shoulder), 8' long_

..Defining characteristics: Barker, shapeshifter, shaggy fur, eyes the size of saucers_

..Class: Undead_ Revenant_

..Image: Incoming_---')

HMM::OUT(‘Nesh’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//park//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.1.7.47

HMM::IN('..Someone susceptible to feeling cold temperatures_')

HMM::OUT(‘Mesen’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//park//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.1.7.51

HMM::IN('..My self_')

CHAPTER 7

HMM::OUT(‘Where is Pip Rippon now?’)

ask:: unknown // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:142j:i618 [loc::hellsborough//unknown__location//000]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.13.20.33.32

HMM::IN('..hellsborough//middlewood_road//467_')

:Describe Pip Rippon

..Signatures indicate average height / weight, indeterminate age, no other defining characteristics_

:Oh come on, that's not much to go on -- boy / girl / man / woman?

..Signatures indicate maturity, but not excessive age_ Heart pattern has similarity with Ripperthroat, but no exact match possible_

:Ripperthroat? You're kidding me, hallucinating right?

..I apologise if my assessment did not meet your expectations_

Enter hive

I made it back to the guest house without incident, and the snuffles behind me faded into the distance, as Shad clearly realised that his job was done and presumably returned home to Van – or to do a little bit of haunting on the streets of Hellsborough; probably both.

Back at the guest house my way was blocked by the clowns who had clearly decided to do an impromptu performance for some of the other guests. Pandora was amongst their number, and it did cross my mind that she might be waiting for me to return home, possibly to keep an eye on my movements, because, as I said, the currency of the clowns is information, and anyone spotted with Van might be of interest, regardless of whether what I was doing was of any importance at the time.

That got me to wondering about how she knew I would be staying at the guest house. I could quite as easily have stayed with Van for the evening, he lives alone and has plenty of rooms in that old house of his. Which led my thinking onto the clowns and how they fit into The Dark Peak demographic.

Clowns are not entirely human, in fact they are not human at all: They just appear to be human. The clowns share as many similarities with the xin, the nascenti and xaexs, being denizens of The Dark Peak and hatched from eggs, rather than born in utero, as we humans are.

Similar to the rest of the denizens they are able to breathe unaided in the murk, as well as being linked into the hivemind, as all those in The Deak Peak are, which led me to thinking about the psycmask. Of course, that would be how Pandora knew that I was at the guest house, rather than at Van’s, since, the psycmask linked me into the infotainment systems of the vast organic network and by necessity the hivemind. She would simply have picked up the information on my whereabouts from there.

This power of telepathy, this hivemind, is well developed in all of the denizens, and accounts largely for the simplicity of their language and the relatively few spoken words exchanged even in long conversations. It is the universal language of The Dark Peak, through the medium of which the higher and lower animals of this world are able to communicate to a greater or less extent, depending upon the intellectual sphere of the species and the development of the individual.

And that is the dichotomy of the psycmask; the council issue one has the infotainment services built into it, which means that your brain waves are connected to the hivemind, and you are constantly bombarded – with images, ads, news – propaganda, chatter – and augmented data, or rather a view of the world that you are allowed to see – according to your rank within the world – your social standing. Yet, without a psycmask, breathing in Hellsborough is difficult – and almost impossible in The Dark Peak, were you to venture out there.

Add to that, if you have the feeding attachment, the automatic delivery of nutrients designed for your health and wellbeing, and there you have the perfect way for the overlords to control the human population.

It isn’t illegal not to wear one, of course, that would be far too dystopian. Which is how Van is able to wear his modified version that does nothing but aid his breathing.

Van has no need for an augmented view of the world, nor the propaganda – the news, the infotainment, the constant chatter – and the powers that be are fine with that. They can still monitor his whereabouts, should they want to, using the organic network. Or the clowns. Or just other inhabitants who are wearing psycmasks – which is the majority, and why I wear one when I’m here to blend in as much as I can – although these days, because most folk wear nanotechnology versions, which are essentially invisible, I look odd wearing a mask – but it’s not that different to the off-world after the pandemic.

The crosslanders, if you see them at all, since they tend to keep to their own areas: The ghettos and the estates on the other side of the great causeway, they’ll probably forego all but the most minimal of psycmask for breathing purposes, or maybe use an alternative type of purification mask altogether, or maybe nothing at all – in Hellsborough the griminess of the air – the murk – is bad, but if your lungs can cope then it’s not the end of the world – unlike in The Dark Peak proper.

Anyway, I slipped past the clown troupe and into the guest house, making straight for my room and letting myself in. By the time I got there, the slight noise from the clowns had subsided and they had gone, so maybe they were waiting for me to show myself after all. Whatever, I bade it no mind and got my head down for the night, I’d had a skin full of ale, and tomorrow was an altogether new day.

HMM::OUT(‘Clown’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//great_causeway//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.1.29.49

HMM::IN('..Colour: Patterned_ Highly colourful_

..Diet: Omnivorous_

..Size: 3'6" - 6' (feet, thumb)_

..Defining characteristics: Humanoid_ Insectoid_

..Class: Denizen_

..Image: Incoming_---')

I got to thinking, said Van when I met him the next day in the bar, last night, after we had parted, about the type of people that the xin are. In fact, said Van, I have been ruminating on it all night and throughout the contents of a bottle of my favourite brand of dark rhum, and well into this morning.

So you’ve not really slept then, I hazarded.

In and out, he said, in and out; I never sleep much anyway, so not really all that unusual.

So tell me, what sort of people are they, the xin?

Tha never knows where your next meal is coming from and tha doant know what’s going to happen tomorrow, this may be tha last day in The Dark Peak, so tha better make t’most of it.

Is that how they think then?

It is, and so do I, said Van, quickly closing his hand round a fly which had landed on his palm. Care to join me?

No, I’ll pass.

The xin are hardy and warlike, and there’s a reason for that, chewed Van. Last night I mentioned an enclosure that I were able to clamber on to avoid me death when I first arrived in The Dark Peak.

When Shad got killed the first time, yes I remember, I said.

Yes, when Shad got killed…

Where is Shad by the way?

I doant know, probably asleep in the pantry, said Van, I haven’t seen him today, I suspect he got in late last night, later than us I imagine.

Anyway, that incubator contained the young hatching xin. But those eggs in the incubator, they were no part of any brood like you would get with cluckers or quackers, no, that incubator was filled with the eggs of the whole community – think of it as like all the frog spawn from a small pond; all mingled together and then when the frogspawn emerge together, all around the same time, they’re all brothers and sisters, regardless of their parents – no-one even knows who their parents are – and from then on, it’s simply survival of the fittest.

HMM::IN(‘#BackflitPirate: incoming’)

ask:: unknown // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:ff32:8877:7b45 [loc::hellsborough//unknown__location//000]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.13.9.45

Interference and static

Ey-up, I got what you're after, it's never too early for a slurp of slime, paste me back #BFP121413. Sound. Gotta go, call me, you know it's reyt.

Interference and static

What was that?

What was what?

Some gravelly voice going on about Backflit Pirate and slurping the slime.

Aye, that’d be Delf, said Van, he’s always getting in on the hivemind and pushing his wares – did he give you a tag?

By tag, if you mean “#BFP121413”, then yes.

Ok, nice one.

Van tapped his psycmask without actually doing much else – I had no idea his psycmask was capable of anything other than acting as a breathing device, but he could clearly use it for communication as well.

That’s done then, he said, with a small grin on his face. Anyway, what was I saying? Ar, that’s reyt:

Each adult xin female lays around a dozen eggs each year, and those which meet the size, weight, and other tests are hidden in an underground vault, where the temperature is too low for them eggs to hatch. These eggs are then carefully examined by senior community midwives, and all but the most perfect are destroyed out of each year’s supply.

Destroyed? I said, incredulous, that’s barbaric.

Yeah Pip, destroyed. Eggs is protein, ain’t they; like I said, survival of the fittest. And yeah, it is barbaric, and the xin are. At the end of five years about five hundred almost perfect eggs have been chosen from thousands of ’em. These are then placed in them almost air-tight incubators to be hatched by t’warmth of that teeny sun.

But Van – you know what you’re saying, don’t you? I had to say it, I couldn’t stop myself. You’re saying the xin destroy their eggs, but because they’re protein, they consume them?

There just ain’t no love with them xin, Pip, not like it’s common with us humans anyway. They’ve carried on for eons with this ’orrible system of theirs, and I reckon it’s the reason for the loss of any higher instincts, like what we might still have – if we really still has ’em.

HMM::IN(‘Alert! Anti-social: Youths. Fire. Refuse bin.’)

hits:: 8766749 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.13.39.1

Hellsborough park. Exacids on route. Avoid area until further notice.

This was a public utility broadcast by The Dark Peak District Council.

Remember last night when I said about that dead dyapnid that Shad dispatched, and then Fenimoss just didn’t say nowt about it when she came back into the room, I’m sure you do. That’s because from when they’re born, they know no father or mother love, they doant know the meaning of the word home; they are taught that they are only suffered to live until they can show that they are fit to live – by their physical strength and their ferocity. If they’re deformed or defective or cack handed, they’re deed meyt, crozzled – and you know what, none of ’em sheds a tear. They are born for cruel hardship from when they’s weeny, and for the rest of their lives they suffers.

I doant mean the adults are intentionally cruel to their young, but it’s a struggle for existence in a cruel world, and each additional life means an added tax on the community. I mean, that’s not unlike here or hereabouts in Hellsborough, but it’s not as savage here as it is out there – the nascenti value what humankind is, and knows it’s an important resource to be cultured and supported, but out there in The Dark Peak, the xin, they doant have no benefactors, and that makes me sound like I’m a fan of the nascenti, but believe me Pip, I ain’t, but life here is almost cushy compared to life out there.

Van is describing some fascinating stuff, which I hadn’t expected. Let me get this right, I said: Basically then, the xin are, by careful selecting their hardiest specimens, practicing genetic engineering – and – and I’m impressing myself with my own insight – they’re regulating the birth rate to offset the loss by death.

I’m not sure what genetic engineering is, but if you say so, then you do. From the moment they is born they is heavily armed and their only education is in fighting and how to survive in The Dark Peak.

I was new to this place and needed them skills too, so I began to learn the ways of the xin and follow their teachings so that I might survive in that place. The xin language, as I have said, is reyt simple, and in a week I could make all my wants known, and understand nearly everything that was said to me. With Fenimoss as my tutor, I developed my telepathic powers so that I could sense pretty much everything that went on around me.

What surprised Fenimoss was that I could catch telepathic messages from others, when they weren’t meant for me, but no one could read a jot from my head. At first this annoyed me, until, said Van with a wink, I realised it was an advantage.

OK, that’s interesting, I said, jotting down a few words in my notepad as Van came to a poignant pause in this story.

What is?

The hivemind, and you being able to read the thoughts if the xin, but not visa-versa. And of course, your recently found ability to communicate with the dead, via Shad.

HMM::IN(‘Farantees Riiide-up!’)

hits:: 9978154 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.14.1.2

Yo, listen up, I got something to say, about a ride that's gonna blow you away, introducing the freshest whip in town, our car gonna turn youz around

Get ready to roll, in style and grace, with this ride, you're gonna own the place, traveling in style, like youz never seen

Farantees Riiide-up!!!!

Ah! Well, the xin, that was a gift, and a definite advantage over them – and, by association all the denizen races of The Dark Peak; they have their organic network and their hivemind, but if I got close enough, I could literally hear their thoughts, which come in very handy.

But our Shad ’ere, that’s different. Our souls were conjoined before his demise, I won’t say that the bond hasn’t strengthened since though. As a kid, my “mother” had said that I possessed this gift for talking to people who weren’t there. I didn’t realise at the time cos I was too young, but it was the same, it was talking to dead people. That incident after Shad become a barghest, that was just this thing that had always been there, I guess.

Sometimes Pip, I wondered why this might be, but it gave me a complete advantage. I have always thought that my space lies between the living and the dead, as you maybe witness here in Hellsborough. You have surely noted that whilst I am not invisible, I am largely ignored by everyone, yet I am not insignificant.

Tell me more about some of your childhood experiences, I said, but I could tell that Van had little interest in telling those stories the way that he picked up his pint and just quaffed, as if snubbing my question. I guess he was just too young to understand such things and took them for granted, it’s just the same old story about talking to imaginary friends, and didn’t we all have one of them, eh?

HMM::OUT(‘Deed meyt, crozzled’)

ask:: Rippon, Pip // stat:: accept[ok]__ // src:: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:037g:7334 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//467]__ // now:: 79.hail-ripperthroat.12.14.14.7.9

HMM::IN('..Dead Meat, Cooked.. Toasted_')