MODRIOMN

Introduction page 5

The Awakening page 6

The Gathering page 26

The Séance page 44

The Coming of the Light page 63

The Theft of Ideas page 132

The Exorcism of Ghosts page 151

The Beginning of the End page 186

The End of the Beginning page 196

MODRIOMN

By

W. E. Ritchie

Cover Photo: Ghosts in the Hall

By

Rachel Titiriga

Introduction

The Awakening

1

A ship is sailing across an uncharted sea. The crew are silent, no-one is talking, all faces straining towards the horizon. The ocean is calm, the weather still, there is no music playing on board, and no lights showing.

Suddenly, there is a massive explosion and chaos everywhere. The ship goes down in minutes and almost no-one escapes. Almost.

As the ship vanishes beneath the waves, a smaller ship laden with men in black diving suits appears and quickly arrives at the bubbling cauldron where the stricken vessel vanished. Without ceremony, and in total silence, the men slide beneath the waves and seek out the wreckage lying below. The question arises – how did the men know the water would not be too deep? The co-ordinates of time and place? These questions are there to be answered another time. For now, the men glide through the dead bodies with their gaping ghastly eyes, and do what they have to do.

2

“Morning Sir!” she says, as her boss walks into the reception area, briskly sweeps off his coat and hat and hangs them on the stand just inside the glass door.

“Morning Sam”. He gives her a brief smile, then disappears into his office, the way he closes the door firmly gives an idea of what kind of man he is, confident, assured, precise.

“Morning Sir”.

“Darren” he says with a perfunctory acknowledgement and smile that half-crosses his face briefly, artificially.

“Anything new?” he asks, already studying the papers neatly filed on his desk as per his instructions.

“Another bank raid last night Sir”

Darren half-walks across the room, then pauses, unsure of his ground. He bites his lip.

“Don’t tell me. The thieves knew the combination” said Inspector Morrison, for it was he.

“Yes, ’fraid so” (sheepishly).

“How the hell is this possible?” (Inspector Morrison again).

“That’s at least fifty, in different towns, always the banks stacked to the hilt with money, no safe ever blown, no vault ever forced, no door wedged open” (consternation).

Silent (Darren).

Then

“Actually Sir, we have had a bit of luck” (nervously).

“Oh?” (grim-faced, using a letter knife, showing frustration). “Go on then”.

“One of the men who did it was captured, had somehow fallen and broken his leg, the others left him”.

The Inspector quickly ascertained where the man was being held and both he and David make their way to the second City.

Face to face with the captive. Surly and silent..

“Look! You’re up the creek without a paddle!” said Morrison sternly, bellowing in the face of the miscreant.

Finally, the man, frightened despite himself, coughed up the details of the rendezvous he was due to make with the others within an hour.

Both Morrison and the man himself knew there was only a slim chance of ameliorating his punishment, but a slim chance was better than nothing, he was a goner regardless. His part in this crime – or any other for quite some time at least – was over.

A support team was quickly assembled, and Darren and his boss rushed off to stake out the rendezvous, keen to see who showed up, hoping that would lead them to the next stage of the investigation

It was quite a bit out of town, but they made it in time to take a strategic place, where they could see anyone who came in and out of the roads to the dilapidated warehouse, where the meeting was due to take place.

Hardly had they settled in, when a large black four-wheel drive vehicle pulled into sight, driving rather slowly, cautiously, obviously on the look-out for anything untoward.

Slowly the gleaming car drew up by the warehouse entrance, and two men exited, looking around them, not nervously, but certainly with vigilance.

Before they knew it, Morrison’s team had descended on them, they barely moved a muscle.

“Well well, what do we have here?” said Morrison, looking at the two men as if something had crawled from under his shoe.

“What’s this all about?” said one of the men, obviously the leader, shocked but not scared, defiance staring from his eyes.

Morrison didn’t answer the man directly, motioning to his crew to take him away. They bundled both men into the van, and whisked them off into the night, leaving the four-wheel drive to be picked up later and forensically examined, as per routine.

Back at the factory, as Morrison and his men whimsically called the HQ, the men were interviewed individually, but it was frustratingly negative. The first man – the obvious leader of the two – gave nothing but “No comment”, and the other man was scared of saying anything for fear of reprisal by his boss and possibly the others behind the raid.

A sheet of paper found on the first man showed very comprehensive details of bank security, bank vault combination, login for security alarms, location of banknotes, amount of currency available – the information could not have been more thorough or specific.

As far as the men themselves, after hours of interrogation, only one thing had come Morrison’s way.

At one point, he managed to bring the second man to desperation, and when he finally asked who was his ultimate boss, he uttered just one cryptic sound:-

M.

3

He found her unconscious on the floor and it took him ages to bring her round. Then, immediately on waking, she was crying hysterically, almost incoherent, babbling about a face she had seen, looking over shoulder, but from above, at an inhuman impossible angle.

It sounded like a bad dream, thought Morrison, but it worried him that she wasn’t the type to let her imagination run away with her, she was down to earth, sensible, didn’t even believe in anything supernatural or even spiritual.

Yet it took him ages to calm her down enough to gain a full account of what had happened.

He didn’t know what to make of it. She was very specific about what she had seen, when she had seen it, what it looked like. It looked like a man, but transparent, glowing, like a ghost, almost a hologram, but there in the room with her, eyes locking with hers, evil in its gaze.

It had now become a real problem, because she was scared to be alone in the house, was nervous, anxious, highly-strung, begging him to stay at home when she knew full well what a workload and responsibility was already on his shoulders.

He had tried to persuade her to see a doctor, but even he was aware of how that sounded, and it only made her worse, made her feel like he was patronising her, and worse still, didn’t believe her.

He didn’t want to believe her, for if it was true, it sounded like a haunting.

How was a rational man to deal with that?

4

Morrison had never had a reason to think of God. He was a good man, but his life had been, until the present, relatively untroubled by philosophical thoughts, or moments of doubt about his place in the World. He was a hard worker, an ethical human being who cared about right and wrong, though admittedly rarely focussing on the feelings of others, as witnessed by his somewhat unfair and brusque treatment of those under his command, a kind of selfishness and thoughtlessness that came from his own expectations of himself and others, rather than from any kind of heartlessness. Despite his progress in the World, and amassed knowledge and education, he had still much to learn.

He was a tough person, and ready to face any adversity, but matters of religion and philosophy were almost alien to him, not on his radar at all. But events now were to take him into those uncharted waters, challenging him and that he thought he knew.

5

It was late at night in the Tower block. Herbert, the office cleaner whistled to himself as he half-heartedly swept away the dust and debris of the day’s accumulation. Further along the corridor, he could see that Miss Markham was working late yet again, the light shining from her office into the dark aisle outside.

It took him some time to reach her door, and he languidly glanced in to say hello to her. Miss Markham sat at her PC desk, concentrating on the screen, but hovering above her was a gruesome hologram, like a child’s drawing of a man, semi-transparent, yet impossibly real.

Herbert gasped loudly, and the apparition turned towards him, its terrible face distorting in hate and anger. It shot forward at impossible speed, eyeball to eyeball right there before Herbert, who cried out in terror, startling Miss Markham, who turned in fright and saw for herself the awful visage of the thing seemingly swamping poor Herbert.

She screamed over and over again, and the vision suddenly vanished into thin air, leaving Miss Markham and Herbert in each other’s arms, crying like children.

6

Back at the office, Morrison poured over the details of the bank raids that had taken place during the past six months.

“This has to be an inside job” he thought to himself, then said the same out loud to Darren, who jumped at the sound of his boss’s voice.

“Nearly fifty raids, every single bank was at maximum cash holding, not one single bank or vault or security system was broken into. It’s impossible to do without full knowledge of the whole set-up, the building, the guard schedules, the money transfers – everything!”

Darren could do little but nod in agreement. He knew was boss was talking at him, not to him.

“We’ve screened every single member of staff, but in any case, not any one of them would know every aspect of security, funding, safe combinations, passwords. We can find no trace of hackers in the computer systems, it’s just inexplicable”.

“How much has been taken Sir?” asked Darren, tentatively, not particularly wishing to interrupt his boss in full flow, but feeling the need to contribute.

Morrison looked at him as if offended.

“Several hundred million”.

Darren merely whistled in reply, drawing another sharp look from his frustrated boss.

As he filtered through the many reports and interviews of bank employees, something caught his eye. A bank security guard, working late at night, said he had seen a ghost.

Had he not had the recent experience of his Wife’s trauma, he would probably have missed it or at least, thought nothing of it, but for a moment, it stopped him in his tracks.

“What is it Sir?” asked Darren, seeing his boss’s startled expression.

“Have a look through the interviews of all the staff of banks involved in the raids. See if you see any unusual reports, a pattern that emerges”.

Darren looked puzzled.

“Anything in particular Sir?”

“Look for a pattern of unusual occurrences, see if something leaps out at you”.

Not knowing what to make of all that, Darren wisely shut up and turned to the computer.

Morrison looked further into the file that had caught his attention. A security guard called Renton was working very late, and was on his own at the vault of the bank, in the process of locking it up, having checked that the contents were secure for the night, when he had the feeling that he was being watched.

Startled, he turned round and caught a glimpse of a shadowy face, hovering in the air behind him. The hairs on the back of his head stood on end, and he sprinted for dear life out of the vault crypt. As he glanced back, he saw that the figure of a ghostly man was watching him. What made it worse, was that the man was smirking in satisfaction and what seemed like pleasure at his discomfort.

When he got back to the main security desk, sweating profusely, the others, seeing the state of him, asked him what was wrong.

“I’ve just seen a ghost” he said. The others immediately broke into laughter.

“That must have been strong stuff you were drinking in the bar last night!” said the swarthy man at the control panel, turning away in mirth.

Despite Renton protesting that it was true, obviously no-one believed him. By the perfunctory nature of the interview notes, Morrison could tell that Renton had fared no better with the police cross-examination. In fact, he had been marked down as an unreliable witness.

But Morrison, thinking again of his recent experience with his wife, felt rather uneasy. The Renton story was disturbingly similar to what his wife had said she had seen. And there was something about Renton’s reactions that suggested at the very least he believed he had seen something.

The phone buzzed on his desk.

“Yes?” he said, impatiently, his manner changing as he recognised the voice on the other end of the phone.

“Come up here at once” said Mason, his immediate superior.

Moments later, Morrison was ushered into the upstairs room of the Chief’s office.

The Chief barely smiled, just motioned Morrison to sit down.

“There’s a top-level conference to be held at government offices tomorrow, and I want you to be there”.

“What’s it all about?” said Morrison, a bit taken aback and annoyed, not wanting to let go the case he was already working on.

“Security matters” said the chief, deliberately being vague, aware of Morrison’s displeasure and ignoring it.

“They want our top man to attend, and that’s you” he said, though Morrison knew what that meant was that he himself couldn’t be bothered going.

The Chief shuffled through some files on his desk, then looked up at Morrison brusquely.

“That’s it” he said, handing Morrison some papers, and effectively dismissing the other man to make what he could of it.

Morrison left the office with an impassive face, but inside he was seething – he hated being diverted in the middle of an important case!

Back in his own office, he could give vent to his annoyance, especially when Darren dared to cross his path straight away.

“What?” said Morrison, not even trying to hide his irritation.

“Sir, there is something strange going on here” said Darren, looking somewhat sheepish and almost reluctant to speak.

“Speak up man!” said Morrison impatiently, knowing he was being unreasonable, but unable to stop himself.

Darren shuffled his feet uneasily.

“There are several reports of people seeing visions, especially late at night Sir. More than a dozen people have mentioned strange phenomena, and many others have hinted at something like that, but have been understandably reluctant to talk about it all – what do you think it means?”

Morrison said nothing, even his anger immediately forgotten as his mind struggled to take on board what was happening here.

None of this was in the least logical, but there had to be a pattern. And was it just coincidence that this pattern had extended to his own family?

7

He never saw the red light.

The carriages lay shattered, like a broken toy train on the track in the middle of nowhere. There was no noise, other than the groaning and occasional screaming of those who were injured, rather than the dead, who of course made no sound at all.

That morning, the train had pulled out of Glasgow Central, heading for England with a precious cargo of used banknotes, to be incinerated in London. It was all done with maximum security, and was of the utmost secrecy, which of course, meant it was an attraction to those of unquenchable greed.

Luckily in some ways, there were not many people on board, only railway and bank staff, plus a security detail (though it was thought at high level that such a covert journey would not really require stringent security, hence the meagre ration of men delegated to the task).

The whole thing harked back to an earlier age, and the robbery of substantial sums of money from a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to

London in the early hours of Thursday, 8 August, 1963, at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England – infamously known as The Great Train Robbery.

All this history was all very well, and interesting though it was, these modern brigands had no intention of jollying the thing along, in the manner of the first Great Train Robbery, there were no such romantic notions, they simply set out to crash the train, totally uncaring about the fate of the travellers on board the stricken carriages, all they cared about was the cargo itself, the fate of human beings was not in the calculation of their heartless plans.

At a point across the Cannock Moors, that bleak and unwelcoming terrain, the drivers were suddenly confronted by the ghastly sight of that face in all its awfulness, the whole ectoplasm stretched across the windscreen, causing the two drivers to shriek out in terror, relinquishing the controls, causing the engine and carriages to plough into the sidings where the other train was waiting stationary, causing a cataclysmic collision. The stationary train simply crumbled with the impact, but the onrushing carriages careered off the track and crumbled down the steep embankment, rolling and bouncing like a toy train falling from a high table, till eventually it settled on a plateau, where a squad of trucks were waiting to disgorge the precious cargo and leave the stricken passengers to the mercy of fate and the eventual belated would-be rescuers who would wind their way to the crash site many hours later, much too late for most of the poor souls contained there, including the driver.

He never saw the red light.