Supernatural Stories featuring The Thing from Sheol
Bron Fane
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
By PETER O’FLINN
He had been there before … why couldn’t he remember?
BRENDAN CASEY had a top o’ the morning feeling as he walked with a swinging, jaunty step between the potato fields. They were green this time of the year, and as high as a man’s knee with little white and purple flowers. Beyond the potato fields he could see the bog, smooth and flat, and inviting. The hills rose to the west, looking down like green guardian angels on the potato fields, the line of women hoeing there, and the flat smooth surface of the bog.
Brendan Casey swirled his shillelah between his fingers with the devil-may-care air of a young man who feels that the world is his oyster. Brendan Casey had no particular idea where he was going or why he should be going there. The job had finished. Jobs have a habit of finishing, but it had paid well while it had lasted and there was money in the other pocket, the pocket that wasn’t used to hold the shillelah. There are two schools of thought about the storing of a shillelah. There is the specially stitched deep pocket school, and there is the inside your thornproof jacket school. Brendan was a deep pocket man.
He finished twirling it and put it back. He liked the weight of it there; it was a very comforting presence and a man, even a peaceful man, which was how Brendan Casey liked to think of himself, could never be too careful. For you never knew when adventure was coming round the corner.
He kept the mountains to the west of him and the potato fields flattened out as he walked. The bog grew slowly less visible as he rounded a bend in the road until finally he could see it no longer. He stooped to pick a shamrock, which he placed boldly in the band of his cap. He kept on walking; the sun rose gradually higher until the pleasant warmth of the Irish noonday bathed the forty shades of green in a rich golden glow, which turned the enchanted green highland into a veritable fairyland, a land flowing over with ethereal molten wealth.
Brendan Casey sat down and undid his bandana of sandwiches. There was a battered steel flask in his hip pocket. Casey washed down the last of the sandwiches, thick Irish ham they had held and very satisfying it had been, too. To his disgust, he found his flask was empty. That mouthful had apparently been the last. Brendan looked around with a practised eye. There was a little cottage high up the mountain slope; it was approached by a winding brown path that threaded its way through the hillside boulders, like a piece of thread in a fine Irish tweed.
With happy self-confidence, Brendan Casey began to climb the mountain path. Behind the cottage a tiny shimmering heat haze that was not due to the sun rose up like a wispy daylight ghost. Brendan smiled softly to himself as he knocked at the door. There was no answer for a few moments and then the thick rustic portal moved slowly back on its hinges and a wizened old leprechaun of a man stood framed in the aperture.
He had a face that was as wrinkled as a bleached prune. The eyes set in that face shone and twinkled like the lakes of Killarney, and the ears which offset the face and, to some extent, served as its frame were the largest pair of human hearing organs which Brendan had ever seen.
“And what would you be wanting, young man?” said the gnome-like cottager.
“Well, I have a very sad story to tell you,” said Brendan.
“Well, then, you had best come in and tell it,” said the cottager. “You won’t be very comfortable standing there on the doorstep, and it’s a fair climb up the mountain.”
“To be sure it’s a fair climb,” agreed Brendan.
He ducked his head and went into the cottage. Peat stood drying in a stack by the fire. On the wall was a long, curiously engraved gun that might have been used in the bitter days of Cromwell. Below the gun on the mantelpiece lay a clay pipe and an old tobacco jar. Neither seemed to have been used for a long, long time; they were covered in dust and the jar’s lid was missing. There was a faded blue and white mug on the far side of the jar, from which a number of bent pipe cleaners drooped like the stems of long dead flowers. An empty potted meat jar held three fresh shamrocks with a neat spray of green behind them. The fireplace itself was a red stone arrangement with an old-fashioned hob and one of those swinging arms for the kettle which was so typical of that part of the country. The rugs on the floor were hand-made and well worn, but they showed proud old Celtic patterns as though they had been made in honour of Dagda or Lug.
Those rugs could well have served in the days of the classical Tuatha. The stool upon which Brendan sat had been hewed with more enthusiasm than skill from some kind of local timber, he wasn’t quite sure what. One of its legs was bent and gnarled, as bent and as gnarled as the cottager himself.
“Well, are you quite comfortable now?” asked the gnome-like inhabitant of this quaint little domicile.
“Ah, sure, I’m splendidly comfortable,” said Brendan Casey.
“You were saying something about having a sad story to tell me,” said the old man. His eyes were twinkling. “Could it be that you have spent your substance in riotous living?” he went on.
“Well, now, there is a thing of which to accuse a young man whom you hardly know,” said Brendan.
“Now, all young men are alike, if you know one you know them all,” said the cottager. “In fact, I was young myself once.”
“Well, that can’t have been so long ago,” said Brendan.
“I see that you have a touch of the blarney in you,” said the old man. He smiled approvingly. “Perhaps you would like a little drop of the hard stuff to help you tell your tale?”
“Well, then, my tale concerns the hard stuff!” exclaimed Casey.
“That’s funny,” said the old man. “I thought perhaps it might!”
He produced a thick green glass bottle from a hidey hole beneath the floor. He took the old blue mug from the mantelpiece and found himself another. A rich amber liquid oozed from the neck of the green glass bottle. It ran around the bottom of the blue and white mug which young Brendan Casey held in his hand, as though it were trying to escape.
“That’s a fine drop of stuff,” said the old man. He pronounced upon it with an air of finality befitting a connoisseur.
“It certainly looks a fine drop of stuff,” said young Brendan. He took a deep breath and sniffed appreciatively at the rich amber-coloured poteen, before placing the mug to his lips. He sipped appreciatively and slowly; there was fire in the liquid. He was drinking fire, enchanted fire.
“Would this be your own recipe?” he said at last.
“It would indeed,” said the old cottager proudly.
“Bejabers, it’s a fine drop of stuff,” said the young man.
“I’m glad that you appreciate it,” said the old cottager.
“I haven’t tasted anything so good since I was over at the shebeen in County Sligo,” nodded young Brendan Casey.
“I like to hear a man talk like that. I like to know a man appreciates his liquor,” said the old Irish cottager.
“Well, then, what’s your sad tale, me boyo,” he went on.
“As I said,” said Brendan, “me sad tale concerns the hard stuff itself.” He spoke in a reverential tone, as a man would speak when he was discussing one of the holy saints.
“You see, I set out this morning with no particular plan of where I was going or how long it would take me to get there,” he continued.
“Yes, I’ve done similar things meself when I was young,” said the old Irishman.
“Now, not knowing how long I was going to be gone or how far I’d be between stops, in a manner of speaking,” said young Brendan, “I didn’t know how much to take in the way of provisions.”
“Ah, well, that is a very difficult thing to work out,” said the old cottager, slowly. “A very difficult thing to work out,” he repeated.
“Not knowing how much provision to take and being a man of limited, well just adequate, resources,” began Casey again.
“Ah, a careful man,” said the cottager. “I like a careful and intelligent man.”
“That’s very nice of you to say so. I see that you have a touch of the blarney yourself,” said young Brendan.
“Ah, we all have a touch of the blarney in us,” said the old cottager.
There was silence for a moment while they finished the poteen and Brendan reached into his pocket and withdrew the flask.
“Now, it’s this little friend that is the cause of all the trouble, you see.”
“Ah begorra, I think I begin to see your trouble.”
“Now, this flask was my father’s,” said Brendan. “And it was my grandfather’s before that. It’s what you might call a well-travelled flask. It’s a very well-travelled flask; it’s a family heirloom, so to speak, a sacred family heirloom. When I drink from that flask I think of my dear old grandfather.”
“Ah, well, there’s a kindly thought,” said the old man with an impish grin.
“And I say to meself,” pursued young Brendan, “what would my grandfather have thought of me if he could come back and see me now? If he could see me now with flask empty?”
“Ah, that would be a mortal pity,” said the old cottager.
“A mortal pity,” agreed Brendan.
“And you wondered perhaps whether I could do anything about it?” said the Irishman.
“I was indeed,” said Brendan.
“Well, now, you’ve come to the right place. Timothy O’Toole has never sent a man away thirsty from his door.”
“Ah, may the good St. Patrick and all the holy angels bless you, Timothy O’Toole,” said Brendan Casey.
The dark green bottle oozed its powerful amber contents into the battered steel flask.
“Oh, it feels better already,” said Brendan. “I’m sure me grandfather is rejoicing up there with the blessed saints. He is looking down at me now.”
“I’m sure he is,” said Timothy O’Toole. “I’m sure he is, me. . .
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Supernatural Stories featuring The Thing from Sheol
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