Supernatural Stories featuring The Phantom Crusader

by Leo Brett, Patricia Fanthorpe, Lionel Fanthorpe

Genres: Fantasy; Occult & Supernatural; Horror

Synopsis

The Phantom Crusader: A skeleton figure gleamed beneath the ancient armour. The Room that Never Was: The door had been there the night before ... and now there was nothing. The Tunnel: Faint and far beneath them, they could hear the unmistakable sounds... Stranger in the Skill: There was someone at the door, someone strangely, frighteningly familiar. The Stockman: Psychic justice ... strange but sure ... Footprints in the Sand: There was nothing but wilderness for a thousand square miles. What had made the prints?

Release date: September 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 110

Sample

Writing as Bron Fane

Blue Juggernaut

Last Man on Earth

Nemesis

Rodent Mutation

Softly by Moonlight

Somewhere Out There

Suspension

The Intruders

The Macabre Ones

U.F.O. 517

Unknown Destiny

Writing as John E. Muller

A 1000 Years On

Beyond the Void

Beyond Time

Crimson Planet

Dark Continuum

Forbidden Planet

Infinity Machine

Mark of the Beast

Micro Infinity

Orbit One

Out of the Night

Perilous Galaxy

Phenomena X

Reactor XK9

Special Mission

Spectre of Darkness

Survival Project

The Day the World Died

The Exorcists

The Eye of Karnak

The Man From Beyond

The Man Who Conquered Time

The Mind Makers

The Negative Ones

The Return of Zeus

The Ultimate Man

The Uninvited

The Venus Venture

The X-Machine

Uranium 235

Vengeance of Siva

Writing as Karl Zeigfried

Android

Atomic Nemesis

Barrier 346

Escape to Infinity

Gods of Darkness

No Way Back

Projection Infinity

Radar Alert

The Girl from Tomorrow

The World That Never Was

Walk Through Tomorrow

World of the Future

World of Tomorrow

Zero Minus X

Writing as L. P. Kenton

Destination Moon

Writing as Lee Barton

The Planet Seekers

The Shadow Man

The Unseen

Writing as Leo Brett

Black Infinity

Exit Humanity

Face in the Night

From Realms Beyond

March of the Robots

Mind Force

Nightmare

Power Sphere

The Alien Ones

The Faceless Planet

The Forbidden

The Immortals

The Microscopic Ones

They Never Come Back

Writing as Lionel Roberts

Cyclops in the Sky

Dawn of the Mutants

Flame Goddess

The Face of X

The In-World

The Last Valkyrie

The Synthetic Ones

Time Echo

Writing as Neil Thanet

Beyond the Veil

The Man Who Came Back

Writing as Pel Torro

Beyond the Barrier of Space (AKA Formula 29X)

Exiled in Space

Force 97X

Frozen Planet

Galaxy 666

Legion of the Lost

Man of Metal

Space No Barrier

The Face of Fear

The Last Astronaut

The Phantom Ones

The Return

The Strange Ones

The Timeless Ones

Through The Barrier

World of the Gods

Writing as R. L. Fanthorpe

Alien from the Stars

Asteroid Man

Doomed World

Fiends

Flame Mass

Hand of Doom

Hyperspace

Negative Minus

Neuron World

Out of the Darkness

Satellite

Space Fury

Space-Borne

The Golden Chalice

The Triple Man

The Unconfined

The Waiting World

The Watching World

Writing as Thornton Bell

Space Trap

Writing as Trebor Thorpe

Five Faces of Fear

Lightning World

Writing as Victor La Salle

Menace from Mercury

“A skeleton figure gleamed beneath the ancient armour.”

THE spade hit something. Borrowdin felt the sensation run up his arm like an electric shock.

“Blast,” he swore savagely. He took the spade out of the ground and laid it down.

“What’s up?” Matthi Singh spoke very commendable English, despite his name and the fact that he had been in the country for only two years.

“I’ve ’it something!” Borrowdin pointed to the trench that the two men were digging. Matthi Singh adjusted his turban, and mopped perspiration from his brow.

“What have you hit, Borrowdin?”

“I dunno.”

Len Jackson, red of face and round of stomach, came out of the foreman’s hut where he had been discussing progress with the clerk of works.

“Wassa marrer, boys? Found an unexploded bomb?”

“We do not know, Jackson sahib,” answered Matthi Singh. “My friend, Mr. Borrowdin, has encountered something with his spade.”

“Well that makes a pleasant change,” commented Jackson.

Borrowdin looked at him darkly from under thick brows.

“Seriously, though, Mr. Jackson, what do you think it is?”

Len leant languidly over the trench.

“Hard to say.” He climbed into the trench, and struck a match.

“I hope it is not a mains gas pipe that is down there, Jackson sahib,” said Matthi Singh.

“I hope so, too!” returned Len Jackson, in a grim, rather phlegmatic voice.

Apparently it was not a gas main, for the match continued to burn without causing any spectacular side events.

“Come and see if you can get some o’ the muck away from the side of it, will you!”

“Right.” Borrowdin and Matthi Singh climbed down into the trench again.

The three men worked away at the object. Their conversation degenerated into a series of grunts and straining sounds.

“Blimey!” commented Len Jackson, “I think it’s an ’elmet! You know, an old-fashioned one, knights in armour, and Crusaders, and that!”

He held up a large, rounded, semi-cylindrical metal object.

“I think I’ve seen something like that in the museum,” said Borrowdin.

Matthi Singh was looking at the helmet very strangely.

“Somewhere it occurs to me, Jackson sahib, that I have seen a helmet like it before. May I see it, please?” Len Jackson handed the helmet over to the Indian.

Matthi Singh examined the helmet from all angles, then rubbed the metal between his finger and thumb as though to test its texture.

“It has a very strange tactile sensation,” he said at last.

Borrowdin raised an eyebrow as though to say that he wished foreigners would be kind enough to speak English so that he could understand them! Len Jackson looked at the side of the gently conical helmet.

“There’s some ’oles round here,” he commented.

“Holes?” queried Matthi Singh. “Oh, yes, there are aperture spaces in the metal, aren’t there?”

“Blimey!” said Borrowdin. “Aperture spaces! Holes! Singhy ol’ mate! Holes! Not aperture spaces, boy. Just plain holes—gaps where there ain’t no metal——”

“Aperture spaces,” repeated Matthi Singh, doggedly. Borrowdin shrugged; Len Jackson was grinning.

“I mean they look to me,” said Matthi Singh, “as though they were meant to hold something.”

“Either that, or they were ventilation,” said Len Jackson.

“What, like ’oles in a cap?” said Borrowdin interrogatively.

“That’s right,” agreed Len. He laughed, “I suppose blokes in the olden days had sweaty skulls same as we ’ave!”

“Wonder if they ’ad dandruff as well,” said Borrowdin, absently.

“You’ve got a lovely mind, you ’ave,” said Jackson.

“Wonder if they ’ad ringworm,” pursued Borrowdin.

“For crying out loud!” exploded Len Jackson. “You ought to be on Emergency Ward 10, never mind a construction gang!” Matthi Singh looked at the little round holes again.

“Perhaps these circular holes are to emit the ringworm,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

Borrowdin exploded into a laugh that ended in a choking cough.

“You smoke too much,” said Len Jackson. “You’ll do yourself in, mate.”

“I believe you’re right,” said Borrowdin, and he lowered himself on to a packing case by the side of the trench. His face was redder now than Jackson’s, and Matthi Singh regarded him in some alarm.

“You think perhaps you should see the doctor, friend Borrowdin,” he said. “As Jackson sahib says, it is a very nasty cough that you have there, very nasty——”

Borrowdin looked up with tears streaming down his face, his eyes were watering profusely. He was still racked by the heavy coughing spasm.

“It’s them fags,” said Jackson, “they’re no good to you Borry boy, no good at all. Pack it in, mate, like I did. Felt a lot better since.”

“I think you’re right,” agreed Borrowdin, when he finally recovered his breath and something of his composure. Jackson took the helmet back to the clerk of work’s office. Matthi Singh and Borrowdin got on with the digging. Within ten minutes Borrowdin was out of the trench again. This time he was holding up a skull, and what looked like the remains of a broken clavicle.

Matthi Singh moved into Borrowdin’s section of the trench and began scrambling about among the bones like an enthusiastic terrier.

George Thompson, clerk of the works, came out of the hut with Len Jackson. Matthi Singh was producing not only bones but pieces of armour, a sword and a dagger.

“There’s no doubt about it now,” said Jackson.

George Thompson shook his head rather dismally. He sighed. He was a tall, slim, melancholy man. Years of construction work accentuate and emphasise character trends. Men who begin with a tendency to plumpness and jollity grow plumper and jollier as the years go by. Men who begin with a tendency to phlegmatic melancholia become more phlegmatic and melancholy as time rolls over them. George Thompson was the epitome of staid, weary, resignation. His eyebrows drooped; his moustache drooped like a straggly grey curtain over lips that turned down at the corners. The lobes of his ears were longer than normal, and this added to the general droopy appearance, giving him a mild resemblance to a bloodhound which has waited too long for its supper.

“We shall have to call them in, I suppose,” said George Thomson.

“Yes, I’m afraid we shall,” agreed Len Jackson, not evincing any more enthusiasm than the clerk of the works had done. “We’re a week behind already,” announced Thomson gloomily.

“ ’Sthe weather,” replied Jackson.

“I’m not blaming you, Len. You and the lads have been doing pretty well,” said Thomson. “I know it’s the weather, and that ruddy main we ran into that wasn’t marked. If young Sproggs hadn’t been so careful, we’d have had a lot more trouble than we have had. He’s a good boy. I think we could give him a bonus at the end of the week, if the Company’ll agree.”

“I don’t see why they shouldn’t. If he hadn’t persisted about that pipe that he found, and stopped Hawkins coming down there with the mechanical digger, we’d have had a month’s hold up! I don’t think they’ll begrudge him a five pound bonus for saving them three or four hundred.”

“And the rest!” added George Thomson.

There was silence for a moment.

“Let the lads carry on working,” said Thomson. “I’ll ring up. Tell them if they find anything else to bring it over here.” He looked down at the duck boards of his “office” floor. The bones and the ancient breastplate lay in a careless heap, The helmet beside them seemed to stare at them disapprovingly as though the little round holes in the side of it were strange, unnatural eyes.

George Thomson picked up the telephone. As he turned away from the heap of pathetic remains on the floor he had the strangest feeling that someone, or something, was looking at him. He had the sensation that someone or something was staring over his shoulder towards the spot where Borrowdin and Matthi Singh were still digging their trench. He shrugged and wiped his moustache with the back of his hand.

The sensation of being watched made him very uncomfortable and it took a deliberate effort of will to prevent himself from turning round and looking at the heap of bones on the floor. He vaguely remembered that Wordsworth, or Longfellow, or one of that school, had written a poem about a “Skeleton in Armour.” But that had been a Viking. He was sure that had been a Viking. And this helmet didn’t look like a Viking helmet.

George Thomson had seen the highly authentic Kirk Douglas version of “The Vikings,” and he knew that no self respecting Viking would have worn a helmet like that round, conical affair on the floor.

Despite the unwelcome interruption to his already overdue schedule George could not completely disguise from himself his own rather reluctant interest, perhaps curiosity rather than interest; for despite his melancholy attitude and generally doleful exterior, George Thomson’s soul was not so dead t. . .