Hands resting lightly on the cordless mouse and keyboard, the little man sat perfectly still. His eyes stared, vacant and unblinking, at the twin flatscreen displays. The continual scroll of computer code cast a ghostly aura upon his hook-nosed face. A large mahogany desk before him, made the little man, in his Savile Row three-piece suit, seem even smaller by comparison. From the perch of his leather swivel chair, his hand-made shoes did not reach the floor.

  All around him, the office shook. A bone-China teacup rattled furiously on its saucer. In fact, everything shook. The many old books upon the shelves. The curios imprisoned in their glass cases. The intricate brass planetarium beneath a curved roof painted with an exquisite night sky, bejewelled with constellations. So violent was the shaking, it seemed the heavens might fall upon his head. When, as suddenly as it began, the tremulous Earth slumbered once more.

  The little man blinked. Set within irises so brown they almost appeared black, his pupils constricted. He blinked again and drew in a long breath. For a long moment he was unsure where he was. In fact, he was unsure who he was. As the rumble of the tube train receded further, that sound was simultaneously familiar and utterly alien. He found it disconcerting.

  It wasn’t unusual for him to slip into a trace to seek other planes. His family had been trained in it as far back as John Dee. But this was something new and beyond his not inconsiderable abilities. Also, he didn’t typically do it at random. Especially not when monitoring the web for signs.

  Web! The word and its associated image stuck out. He had a memory of being he supposed was a spider spinning a web between the stars and tugging those threads to subtly change the course of events. As he tried to focus on the memory, it began to evaporate like a dream.

  He splayed his hands. They were attached to his arms and yet it was as if he was seeing them for the first time. Long slander fingers, with pronounced knuckles and smattering liver spots of late middle age.

  Who am I? He thought. There was an answer there, a name existing a hair’s breadth from his perception.

  Where did that come from? He wondered, trying a different angel of thought.

  He shook his head. The world was coming back now, and the visions of his fugue were fading but not gone. The nether of the Greenwood, wild and untamed, a place in between forgotten things and forgotten ways. Herne and Sugnar were there, brother and sister, two of the ancient gods, but not the most ancient. No, not by a long way. And sand, dunes, a prison of some kind. Something else too. Someone else. But who? The little man could not see him because, he was him.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The little man knew perfectly well who he was. Turning it back and forth, he looked at his hand.

  This was their hand. Gushing water and gouts of sand blotted out his mind’s eye. He clenched his fist and gave a small, high-pitched laugh. He knew perfectly well who he was. Rundle Wyrd-Smith. Sir Rundle Wyrd-Smith the Third to give him some of his appositives. Others might be Guardian of the Seventh Seal, Searcher for the Arc of Whispers, Chief Alchemist and Seer to the Privy Council. And of course, Chief Superintendent to the London Metropolitan Police Force’s little-known Relics and Antiquities Unit. So named that it might be easily confused with the better-known Art and Antiques Unit. Indeed, they had even been known to collaborate when their interests intersected. Feeling rooted back in his own body again, he nodded to himself.

  The deep rumble of another tube train was growing in the distance. This was the downside of having one’s office and department, such as it was, secreted in the disused London Tube station of the British Museum. A station out of use since 1933 when the Holborn stop opened.

  Rundle fixed his attention on the screens once more. Where had he been? Ah yes, the recent Ripper copycat murders had piqued his interest. His department kept an open file on the case. It had certain fingerprints, if you’d pardon the pun, which kept it in their purview. There were many such cases, most of which had never been heard of by the wider public. This one however seemed to have resurfaced. A Kenny Stokes was the lead detective on the case. From all the chatter it seemed to come to a head last night at Renfrew Tower in Whitechapel. But from what Rundle was seeing, something happened on Gallows Court too. What exactly? He could not yet say. He was making this deduction from several data sources. Most of which were inferential in nature. For example, it was usual for the number of random violent assaults and domestic abuse reports to spike around a location of significant preternatural conflict. There had also been reports of an earth tremor made to the emergency services late last night, but the British Seismic Survey was clean. And then there was the incident at the Royal London Hospital this morning, which had caused the Detective Chief Constable to call Wyrd-Smith. He had better head to the hospital and feared it was somehow connected to whatever happened last night in Whitechapel.

  The last thing Rundle did before hopping down from his chair was to pull up the MET’s HR of Detective Kenny Stokes. He very much wanted to meet this man. Very much indeed.

  By the time he’d hoped down, gathered his coat and walked to the door, the next tube train was thundering through a nearby tunnel. Amid the shaking, a powerful sense of Déjà vu struck him. The curved ceiling of his office shook, and he half expected sand and salt water to pour through the cracks. Again, the ridiculous question posed itself.

  Who am I?

  Barely more than a breath upon his lips he whispered the answer, and the name was both strange and familiar.

  ‘Rundleskink.’

  END