The Dark Corner

“It’s really the most remarkable device,” Dempsey had exclaimed breathlessly over the phone, “Though I’m not sure ‘device’ does it justice, in truth.” 

The sun had set by the time the taxi dropped Kavanagh off on the outskirts of the estate. Dempsey’s instructions had been to disembark at its entrance and then walk the rest of the way, to a unit at its western end. Just why Dempsey didn’t want some random taxi driver knowing exactly where he worked was something Kavanagh decided was a question best left unanswered. It was shaping up to be a strange old evening.  

Before long, Kavanagh reached the location he’d been given. The building was much larger than he’d expected – a free-standing three storey warehouse with a battleship-grey, low-sloped roof and fiber cement walls. The vehicle access door’s faded sapphire had been crudely daubed with white paint reading “NO ENTRY.” Next to it was a smaller door flanked by a security panel and a CCTV camera shielded by a wire mesh. He double-checked the instructions and knocked on the door, the metallic thuds reverberating like the tolling of distant church bells.  

A moment later, the heavy door opened inwards to reveal Dempsey, looking dishevelled in suit pants and a blue cotton shirt, neck button open and dark patches of sweat visible on its sleeves. Dempsey regarded Kavanagh with an intense glare, as if he’d just pounced on an intruder. 

“Well, hello stranger,” Kavanagh began before Dempsey cut him off. 

“Were you followed?” 

“Followed?” Kavanagh couldn’t disguise his puzzlement, “Actually, yeah. All the way here. Calls herself Sabrina. Absolute stunner. Can’t get enough of me. No, of course I wasn’t fucking followed.” 

Visibly relieved, Dempsey stood aside and beckoned Kavanagh into a small office equipped only with a mouldy reception desk. A green door was situated on the other side of the room, as was a smudged glass window that partially revealed the contents of the warehouse itself. Kavanagh could vaguely discern some kind of machinery with several points of illumination on the other side of the glass. Dempsey slammed the door closed behind him and then firmly shook his friend’s hand. 

“Good to see you,” he said. 

“Likewise, man,” Kavanagh answered and produced a screw top bottle of wine from his shoulder bag, waving it before him, “Can I interest you in a drink?” 

“Are you serious?” 

“Mate,” Kavanagh said, “I’m in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, I’ve not seen you in ages, I was on the piss when you called, and you’ve asked me to come and inspect some… experiment or whatever it is that you’ve thrown together. Do I look like I am anything but deadly, deadly, serious?”  

He took a swig and offered it again to Dempsey, who patiently shook his head. 

“Thank you for coming. There’s nobody else I could really trust with this. And I need someone with your skills.” 

Kavanagh tried not to betray his satisfaction and surprise at this admission. There was a time when he’d have felt patronised by such a sentiment but now he was happy to take compliments whenever he could. The two men had been good friends at university but what drew them together then had driven them apart in the years since.  

Kavanagh wasn’t a technical person in the traditional sense. A talented linguist, he’d delved into the study of ancient languages partly because he found it fun but, more pertinently, his father and older brother were surgeons. There wasn’t much point in trying to follow them. He’d never have been his own man. He was the spare. He allowed himself the luxury of doing what he wanted and his family had the means to enable that. 

Not Dempsey. He had a brilliant scientific mind. Restless and insatiably curious, Kavanagh had first thought his zeal was a result of his relatively humble background. He’d heard how the preternaturally gifted could be driven to insanity trying to escape their penury. But he’d met many people outside of his social class in the years since. None had Dempsey’s drive, much less his brilliance. It hurt his pride – he wasn’t quite sure why – to consider that his friend was simply unique.  

“Got a problem that needs solving? Jesus, that’s a new one for you,” he smiled, “Anyway, kill the suspense. What have you got going on out here? Last I heard you were working on… what was it… near-field communications or something?” 

 The faintest traces of a smile played on Dempsey’s face for a second. 

“Branched out a little from that,” he said before nodding towards the green door, “Come on. I’ll show you. Oh, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that,” he pointed to Kavanagh’s smartphone, which was poking from his pocket, “is turned off.” 

“Ohhh, it’s like that, is it?” Kavanagh smiled as he complied, “Don’t worry, Demps. I make it a point never to illicitly film my friends’ sex dungeons.” 

“Dickhead,” Dempsey sighed. 

“Yep!” Kavanagh chirped as they stepped towards the door. 

———— 

Dempsey led the way as they entered the warehouse. It was dimly-lit but the wall of heat, so characteristic of overworked CPUs that hit them as they entered briefly reawakened Kavanagh’s suspicions that his friend had called him to discuss some crypto mining venture. Over to the left he could see an array of workbenches and desks surrounded by spare parts, metallic debris and all kinds of mechanical and electrical detritus. Laptops peppered the area, many of them audibly crunching through heavy computational cycles as unfathomable amounts of data streamed across their screens. But the room was dominated by its centrepiece. 

It resembled a large, rectangular ice cube, about eight metres per side plus another three metres tall. A pressurised chamber of some kind, reinforced with riveted steel. Inside, an apparatus that looked similar to an old light bulb, about the size of a mirror ball, was suspended via a metal support from the centre of its ceiling. A series of thick cables and wires snaked along the column, out through the top of the chamber and down along its side into a machine that could have been a server bank fused with a combustion engine. Affixed to this machine was a desk with another laptop and an archaic book, its sepia-tinged pages opened about half way through. The room crackled with the subtle hum of its technology. Kavanagh was stunned. 

“You know how to spend money, don’t you?”  

“Let me tell you, few people are as gullible as venture capitalists,” Dempsey offered, “Once you mention ‘AI’ they throw cash at you. I’ve been building all this for months and feeding them with bullshit profit projections to keep the funds flowing.” 

Kavanagh glanced around the room and said, “It’s not some AI bullshit, obviously.” 

“It’s not AI, no, though I have used some similar tech for the donkey work,” Dempsey answered. 

Kavanagh slowly circumnavigated the massive enclosure and then walked over to what he assumed was the control module, that hybrid of an engine and a server. The setup had a quality that suggested it had been both cobbled together but also meticulously constructed, evidence of a mind fixated on certain aspects of its intended use and ambivalent about others. Elegance fused with absent-mindedness. Eventually he looked blankly at Dempsey. 

“Alright, I’ll bite,” he said, “What the fuck is it?” 

Dempsey exhaled, clasped his hands and said, “I suppose some context is needed first.” He weighed up what he was about to say. “I know the source of the electronic interference that disrupts mobile, radio and wireless signals. There’s something out there.” 

Kavanagh simply shook his head. Perhaps the wine was beginning to have an effect. 

“Come again?” 

“When you turn on a radio and you hear static, or when you get interference over Bluetooth,” Dempsey said, “It’s not just static. It’s not just interference.” 

“It’s background radiation,” Kavanagh said dismissively. 

“In most cases, yes,” Dempsey answered carefully, “But in others, well, not so much.” 

“Then what is it?” 

Dempsey gestured him over to the laptop. Kavanagh positioned himself alongside and they both peered at its screen, which displayed data charts and sine waves flashing by at dizzying speeds. 

“It was something I noticed when working on network protocols,” Dempsey began, entering commands that slowed down the rate of the displays on the screen. “The interference wasn’t random. Well, it was ‘random’ but its ‘randomness’ wasn’t, you get me?” 

“No,” Kavanagh answered, “No, I don’t get you, Demps.”  

Dempsey, growing frustrated, pointed to a graph on the screen. 

“The interference happens at random intervals but when it does happen it has a characteristic signal. Or rather several characteristic signals, to be accurate.” 

Kavanagh squinted at the screen but found that he might as well have been trying to decipher an alien language. He looked again to Dempsey for clarification. 

“I’ve detected the same signals through observation of global comms traffic outages and network failures over the past couple of years. I believe it’s a form of communication.” 

“What are you talking about here?” Kavanagh asked, “Is this the Chinese or the Russians up to some shit?” 

“No, no, it’s not them,” Dempsey answered, “The source of the signals doesn’t map to anything in three dimensional space. And they’re too strong to have originated somewhere like another planet. But their consistency and power suggest coherent forms and an intelligence at work. I…” Dempsey halted, “… think they’re coming from another plane of existence.” 

“What?” 

“I know how it sounds,” he said as he raised his hands in placation, “But I can prove it. And more than that, I think we can make contact.” 

“Look, man,” Kavanagh rubbed his eyes, “I don’t know what all this is, okay? I mean, I can see it’s not a prank. Christ knows jokes have never been your ‘thing…’” 

Dempsey cut him off, “I can prove it.” 

Kavanagh smiled condescendingly, “Alright then Demps, go ahead. Prove it.”  

“First, I want you to listen to something.” 

Dempsey turned to face the laptop. It had been difficult to see them in the gloom but Kavanagh noticed two large, dark speakers resting just behind it on the desk. Dempsey keyed in commands as he spoke. 

“The receiver over there,” he indicated something that looked like a repurposed satellite dish attached to the far wall of the warehouse, “It’s been reconfigured to scan for frequencies common to the disturbances I’ve observed. And it’s picking up…” his finger hovered hesitatingly for a moment, “… this.” 

What came from the speakers couldn’t really have been described as a “sound.” As a child, Kavanagh had once been reduced to hysterical tears by a distorted scream from a movie his parents had been watching in the other room. He’d never learned what the film was, never wanted to. But in that second he was immediately returned to that place of terror and vulnerability. The noise writhed up his spine like an electric current, scything into his ears like syringes. It was a piercing electronic shriek ending in a Shepard scale that suggested infinities of pain and isolation. It was as if its source was being wrenched and twisted beyond the threshold of mere agony.  

Kavanagh instinctively clasped his hands over his ears, closed his eyes then, with some embarrassment, realised he’d yelled in fright. As the noise subsided and the gentle thrum of the warehouse’s wealth of technology returned, the lull felt all the worse for the possibility that what he’d heard might return. For a second, his rational mind tried to suggest it was a trick Dempsey had conjured. But, as Kavanagh himself had acknowledged, a sense of humour was perhaps the only gift his friend did not possess. He opened his eyes to see him smiling, somewhat sadly. 

His voice creaking with infantile fear, Kavanagh croaked, “What… what was that?” 

Dempsey regarded him evenly and said, “That’s its voice.” 

“Voice?” Kavanagh spat, incredulously. 

“Probably not the right word to use as I very much doubt these things have vocal chords,” Dempsey said matter-of-factly, “But it’s talking.” 

“Bullshit,” Kavanagh continued, lowering his arms, “How do I know you haven’t just mocked that up? You could record something like that in fucking Ableton or whatever.” 

Again, Dempsey looked at him with a tranquil sadness. 

“Because,” he said, pointing to something on the screen, “It’s not a recording.” 

His finger indicated a three-dimensional graphical display of what Kavanagh assumed to be objects in the room, with two red spheres representing the two men. A small blue icon flickered in the space above one of them. 

“It’s a live transmission,” Dempsey continued, “It came from behind you.” 

 Kavanagh spun around like a caged tornado but saw only the cinderblock walls of the warehouse. He began slowly stepping back towards the desk, tentatively waving his hand before him, expecting to find some residual trace of whatever had made that noise. There was nothing but air. 

“Let’s try above us,” Dempsey said as he entered more commands. 

Another cry burst from the speakers. This one was subtly different – lower in pitch, less suggestive of anguish. Kavanagh was no less frightened. 

“Yeah,” Dempsey laughed as they both gazed upwards, Kavanagh’s eyes darting around the room, “Yeah, we’ve got company.”  

———— 

Seated on a chair next to the door, Kavanagh stared into space, occasionally sipping wine from the grimy cup he’d been handed from a workbench. Dempsey paced in front of him, warily and nervously explaining his findings. Kavanagh struggled to maintain concentration as that alien screech remained lodged in his mind like an afterimage. He started to regain focus as Dempsey was saying, “… and I was able to transform it into a sound after running it through an algorithm I’d been working on. Took the best part of a day.” 

“Where did it come from?” 

“Technically,” Dempsey looked around the warehouse, waving his hand, “It came from here. Their realm is all around us. A few seconds out of phase with our world, perhaps, but in some ways occupying the same space.” 

“But,” Kavanagh began hesitantly, “I thought you said these… transmissions didn’t map to a location in three dimensional space? How are you able to know where they’re coming from?” 

“Well, the maths is… complicated,” Dempsey said, scratching his temple, “But basically, I found a way of applying a phase shift to the disturbances. Like focusing a camera lens.” 

He crouched down in front of Kavanagh, with the manner of a parent comforting their despairing infant, and held out his raised palm, miming the action of pushing against something soft. 

“They infringe on our dimensional plane only tangentially but with noticeable effects. Like if you touched your hand on the surface of a lake. Creates ripples…” he leaned in closer, “That’s what the electronic interference is. They’re talking to us.” 

Kavanagh sat back in the chair, closed his eyes and exhaled, finally staring directly at the ceiling. He gathered himself. 

“And who are… ‘they?’” 

Dempsey considered this for a moment and looked at his feet. 

“I’m not sure a term exists for them,” he said, then looked up again, “I suppose ‘alien’ will do for now. But that question is why we’re here.” 

He stood up and gestured to the machine. 

“That’s what this is for. It’s going to help us find out.”  

Kavanagh had almost forgotten about the bizarre apparatus that was the reason for his visit. 

“So,” he said, “You gonna tell me what it is?” 

Dempsey laughed sheepishly. “Well, it doesn’t have a name either. But I can tell you what it does. It’s a machine designed to force open the membrane between our world and theirs. It’s an interdimensional portal device.” 

“Of course it is,” said Kavanagh, “I mean, that’s the first thing I thought when I walked in here. ‘Hey, look at the big interdimensional portal device over there,’ I said to myself.” 

Dempsey sighed, shook his head and muttered, “I suppose I could have pitched it better.” 

“‘Pitch’ – funny you should say that,” Kavanagh stood up and approached him, “Because that’s what I thought this was all going to be about. I thought that massive brain of yours had produced some fucking god-tier new tech that, I don’t know, sucked carbon from the air and turned it into ice cream.”  

Kavanagh giggled as he began to shake with nervous energy, “I thought you were going to pitch it to me. And that I was going to sign up for it. Then we’d raise the capital, save the world, and spend the rest of our lives trying to think of ways to exhaust an inexhaustible supply of money.” 

He stopped a few inches from Dempsey’s face. 

“Instead I’m here listening to you play me sounds of Christ knows what and talking about… interdimensional portals and aliens. You see why I’m struggling here, Demps?” 

“You don’t believe me?” Dempsey asked, calmly. 

“Call me a Doubting Thomas if you like,” Kavanagh answered, “I believe that you believe this is all real, Demps. But I need to see something.” 

“That can be arranged,” said Dempsey and he walked over to the machine. He threw a number of switches, then entered some commands on the laptop. The ambient thrum of the room’s technology escalated in pitch until it became a droning, pervasive hum that Kavanagh could feel in his bones. Dempsey stood back. 

“Alright, so ‘interdimensional portal device’ is a bit unwieldy,” he said, “So what do you want to call it? You get to decide.” 

“‘Tommy,’” Kavanagh snapped back instantly, rolling his eyes and finishing what was left of the wine. 

Dempsey recoiled. “Tommy?” 

“As in, Doubting Thomas,” Kavanagh shrugged. 

Dempsey smiled and pointed at the control module, “I am not calling my greatest achievement ‘Tommy.’” 

“Yeah, well, too late,” Kavanagh said as he tossed the cup onto a nearby table, “My decision, remember? And besides, it looks like a ‘Tommy,’ don’t you think?” 

Dempsey adjusted one of the controls and shook his head, “You are such a wanker, you know that?” 

The diffuse lighting of the warehouse suddenly began to flicker and dim as “Tommy” powered up. Soon, the only real sources of illumination were the screens of the computers and the instrumental readouts. Slowly, the mirror ball in the centre of the vast glass chamber began to emit a milky fluorescence that streamed off it in ribbons of light. Kavanagh looked over at Dempsey, who was now furiously typing on the laptop and casting glances at the data on its screen.  

“Demps,” he said, “What’s happening? What are we looking for?” 

Dempsey looked back at him for a moment, then was distracted by something over Kavanagh’s shoulder. 

“That,” he said as he slowly raised his arm, pointing at what was behind his friend.  

Kavanagh turned around. 

In the centre of the chamber, directly beneath the mirror ball, a pinpoint of light that had no visible source appeared. Gradually, it bloomed into a dazzling, irising cloud of pure white that cast an eerie fluorescence around the warehouse. It was accompanied by a gust that sounded like the whispering of a thousand ghosts. Despite his apprehension, Kavanagh stepped towards the chamber to inspect it, assuming it was some kind of illusion. He could find no such evidence. Stunned, he turned to face Dempsey, who was looking at the light with a kind of joyous exhilaration.  

“You wanted to see something,” Dempsey smiled, “This is ‘something.’” 

Kavanagh simply stared, open-mouthed. “What the fuck is it?” 

“A window,” Dempsey answered quietly, “It’s a window onto another world. We’re looking into another dimension.” 

What had appeared was vaguely spherical in shape, its sides undulating and warping randomly. It was perhaps a metre in diameter and through it Kavanagh could see a greyish void interspersed with points of light that were oddly familiar. 

“Are we safe?” Kavanagh stuttered, the first pangs of real fear digging into his chest like talons. 

“The glass is pressurised to forty atmospheres,” Dempsey answered confidently, “Radiation-shielded too. It may look fragile but that material is as strong as the hull of a military submarine.” 

Slightly reassured, Kavanagh slowly paced around the chamber. There were no visible distortions or warping of the void, which appeared to have a gaseous quality. The points of light remained static and several of them flickered with a kaleidoscopic brilliance.  

Then the portal began to phase and contract, slowly at first but then rapidly dwindling until it was little more than the speck of light it resembled when it first appeared. A few more seconds and it closed completely, the unholy sounds dying with it. “Tommy,” its great strength draining away from the effort, audibly powered down and the mirror ball ceased glowing. The warehouse returned to its twilit calm.  

“What happened?” Kavanagh shouted. 

Dempsey shrugged, “It takes an enormous amount of power to keep the portal open. And the subatomic particles used in its formation eventually decay. I have to be careful with what I draw from the grid. That there was enough for a demo.” 

Kavanagh struggled to contain his shock and weakly asked, “How did you do this?” 

Dempsey shifted uncomfortably, his hands planted in his pockets like a guilty school kid, and almost with a shrug said simply, “Tachyons.” 

“Tachyons?” 

“Aim a focussed tachyon beam at a point in three-dimensional space, apply the correct dispersal pattern and… look, you’re not a scientist. But basically you can peer beyond this dimensional plane,” he said. 

Kavanagh shook his head, scanning his memory for whatever references he could summon. 

“But, tachyons are meant to be hypothetical particles,” he said, “They don’t exist.” 

“They do now,” Dempsey said, evenly. 

Kavanagh wandered back over to the chair and slumped down, exhausted. He cupped his hands around his mouth and nose, reeling from what he’d seen. 

“Always knew you’d do something special,” he said eventually, “Never this.” 

“Oh, that’s just a preview,” Dempsey said, “‘Special’ will take something more. That’s where you come in.” 

———— 

They stood before the desk at the control module again, inspecting the archaic, leather-bound book. Kavanagh delicately flipped through the pages and marvelled at the text, which consisted of a torrent of sentences and hieroglyphs from a variety of ancient languages. He recognised Sumerian, Latin and Korine Greek. But the rest mystified him.  

“Where did you get this?” He asked. 

“Called in a few favours at the university,” Dempsey answered tersely, “You recognise it?” 

“I haven’t seen it before but I think I know what it is, if that’s what you’re asking,” Kavanagh murmured, “I’ve heard the stories about it. And I don’t like where this is going. What do you need this for?” 

Dempsey ignored his lack of enthusiasm. “The beings I spoke of earlier,” he said carefully, as if fearful they could hear him, “They don’t exist in the realm that we just opened the portal to a few minutes ago.” He grew more agitated and intense as he spoke, “To contact their specific plane requires very precise information and commands. I believe that they’ve visited our world before, in the distant past.” 

“How?” 

“My hypothesis is that individuals – people – of extraordinary sensitivity were able to contact them on some level beyond our understanding. We have words for them. Some say madmen. Some say ‘prophets.’” He paused for effect. “I think some of the teachings and recollections described in religious texts are not entirely fictional. In some cases, I think they are stories of communication with this other world. And the people capable of communicating with it described how, in books like the one we’ve got here.” 

“You’re not serious?” Kavanagh sighed dismissively. 

“Look,” Dempsey leaned in close to him, “These beings may be the origin of what we came to describe as angels. The portal device is capable of opening a window to their world but it’s useless trying to reach it without knowing the right commands. Like trying to guess someone’s number without using a phone book. This,” he tapped on the page open before him, “… This is the phone book.” 

Kavanagh cut him off, “Demps, what you’ve got here is a collection of prayers and incantations from ancient cultures. They have historical significance but nothing more. You might as well have brought the Book of Kells.” 

“Oh, that’s in the stores, if you want to take a look.” 

Dempsey smiled at Kavanagh’s double-take. 

“Bit late for you to be developing a sense of humour, no?” 

“Too late for you to realise why I asked for you in particular?” 

That much Kavanagh had figured out.  

“You can afford all this but you can’t afford a professional linguist or translator?” 

“It’s not that I can’t afford one,” he said tightly, “It’s that I can’t trust one. But I do trust you. Wild as that sounds, I trust you.” 

Kavanagh laughed derisively, “Some would say you’re not the first to have made that mistake.” He looked back at the book. “Alright, show me what you’ve got.” 

Dempsey leaned across him and opened a page.  

“Do you recognise the language?” 

Kavanagh peered closely and blinked. 

“Yes,” he nodded slowly, “But why me? An AI would probably be more accurate with this than I would by now.” 

“Haven’t you listened to me?” Dempsey sighed, “I can’t trust AI with this,” Dempsey said as he rubbed his forehead, “There are… nuances that only a human would appreciate. And I know that you studied this. I know this is what you’re good at.” 

“Fuck’s sake man,” Kavanagh sighed, “That was a long time ago. I’m not working in the linguistics field anymore. It’s safe to assume my grasp of it is rusty.” 

“You’re doing yourself a disservice,” Dempsey said, “Just translate what’s on this page.” 

Kavanagh cursed under his breath and then began reading.  

“The first batch of words here,” he said, indicating the strange script at the top of the page, “They seem to be proper nouns – names of people, places. Some other things that I don’t really recognise…” 

Kavanagh peered closely, his index finger following the sentence that unfurled across the rest of the page. 

“But the rest of it,” he said, squinting at some of the details, “is a call for communion with… something called Azraoth?” He looked quizzically at Dempsey for a second, “It speaks of opening a… window, I think, to its ‘higher realm.’ It ends with a plea for knowledge and to ‘see what is not seen.’ There’s more to it – lots of repeated verse – but that’s the gist of it.” 

Dempsey was chewing his nails, anxiously eyeing his friend, “You can translate all of it?” 

“Yes, I think so.” 

Dempsey was exhilarated. “Network protocols…” he said with a smile and began keying in commands on the laptop. “Coupled with the information I gathered from picking up their transmissions,” he said, “it should be enough to lock onto their spatial plane and… contact them.” 

“You are unbelievable, you know that?” Kavanagh snorted with bemusement, “I mean, is this even the right thing to do, Demps? If these things exist, are we not taking a massive fucking risk by trying to contact them here, now, alone? What if they’re hostile?” 

“Anything that advanced would not be hostile,” Dempsey answered. “And the second I notified the authorities about what this technology is capable of, it would fall into the hands of monsters much closer to home. The world is not ready yet,” he said and then threw the switches on the machine again before adding, “But I am.” 

The portal device began to thrum once more as it powered up. 

“When I give you the signal, I want you to enter the translation into the command window here…” Dempsey nodded at the laptop screen, where a blinking cursor awaited input, “In English, that is. ‘Tommy’ will do the rest.” 

Dempsey walked towards the chamber. 

“Wait,” Kavanagh, silently pleased that his nomenclature had taken root, shook his head, “What will it do?” 

Dempsey turned back to face him. 

“It will convert the translation of the ‘summoning’ into a series of signals that will be transmitted via the portal that’s being generated. If something on the other side receives them,” he smiled, “Well, it’ll be quite a show. If anything goes wrong,” he pointed to something on the device, “that’s the killswitch. It’ll shut down the portal gracefully and power down.” 

Kavanagh inspected the burgundy-coloured rectangular pad, the size of his palm, which was surrounded by black and yellow hazard warnings. 

“Subtle!” He said, before nervously offering, “Always come prepared, eh?”  

The mirror ball again began to project its strange energies. Dempsey positioned himself directly in front of the chamber and rubbed his hands down his face in anticipation. Again, the lights in the warehouse began to dim. Again, “Tommy” emitted a drone indicating it was reaching full power. Shortly, the light source reappeared and a portal began to form. It slowly grew in size, a rose bloom of pure light, illuminating the warehouse and filling the chamber with a dazzling energy that seemed to pirouette around the corners of the enclosure. The susurration returned, a chorus of unearthly sighs and screeches. Dempsey’s face was a radiant glow of exhilaration and joy. 

Kavanagh was rooted to the spot in awe. This was different from what he’d seen before. This time he could glimpse a bewildering array of colours and light, a realm that seemed to writhe with life and energy. Emotions coursed through him, almost overwhelming his senses. Fear, excitement and a sudden sense of his own cosmic insignificance struck him and a single tear slalomed down his cheek. The light from the portal and the sounds that accompanied it were mesmerising. It was beautiful. He was afraid, perplexed and awestruck. But it was beautiful. 

He looked at Dempsey who was now waving at him to move to the laptop. The signal. The translation. Yes, Kavanagh still had work to do. His fingers trembling with shock, he keyed in the translated commands and pressed enter. As he did so, an energy pulse of some kind bloomed from the mirror ball and circled the portal, briefly increasing its luminosity. He wasn’t sure what he’d done but judging from Dempsey’s satisfied reaction he was reassured that it had worked. 

Seconds passed that felt like an eternity. Kavanagh looked around the warehouse uneasily, unsure what to expect.   

“When will we know?” He shouted to make himself heard. 

Dempsey didn’t take his eyes from the portal and seemed to marvel at it. Shaking his head slightly, he answered, “No way to tell for sure. But if they’re as close as they were earlier, they’ll have heard it. We’ll…” 

Kavanagh crumpled to his knees like a bottle being flattened beneath the wheels of a car, emitting a terrified cry in the process. Dempsey too was overwhelmed and shielded his ears. An electrifying call of deafening power, several times stronger than the transmission Kavanagh had heard earlier, belted from the portal and somehow reverberated through the walls of the chamber, filling the warehouse with its awesome intensity. It was a sound so unfamiliar to human ears that Kavanagh had to struggle to hold back tears of pure terror. He opened his eyes, rose to his feet, and turned to face Dempsey, who was now staring, transfixed, directly into the portal. Kavanagh took a couple of steps towards him and followed his gaze. 

On the other side, something was moving.  

———— 

The vista beyond the portal had previously resembled an endless expanse of purplish vapour, through which were visible nebulous forms that were similar to clouds but riven with clumps of matter. It was not the vacuum of space but an atmospheric environment. Perhaps the surface of a solid body like a planet or an asteroid. At least, that’s where Kavanagh’s mind went. He had been gazing at a world no human had seen before and his mind mapped the familiar, comforting concepts of this universe onto what was before him. He had no such recourse for what was now approaching. 

It seemed to be free-floating, or motivated by means unknown to Dempsey and Kavanagh. Moving silently, it was an iridescent substance that simultaneously exhibited solid and liquid qualities. Its size altered periodically but rhythmically and though its shape was inconstant it roughly took the form of a closed flower bud. There were no visible sensory organs. It slowly approached the aperture.  

Kavanagh planted his hands on the desk, gripping it as if he risked being pulled from it at any moment. His legs shook with fear and he glanced over at Dempsey, who was regarding the object with nothing less than rapturous awe. He had done it, Kavanagh thought. His maddening, maverick friend had actually done it. He’d been proved right. Other worlds did exist. Extraterrestrial life did exist. And they were the first humans to see it. Despite his naked, unrestrained fear, Kavanagh could not resist the pilot light of joy and humility igniting within him.  

“Is it…” he croaked, “… real?” It was all he could manage. 

Dempsey smiled at him. “Yes. It’s real. We’re seeing this.” 

At this, Dempsey produced from his pocket a smartphone and began hurriedly tapping on its screen.  

“What are you doing?” Kavanagh asked. 

“I’m using your translation,” Dempsey said breathlessly, “to communicate. I think it has auditory senses. Time to find out.” 

Dempsey finished what he was doing and looked expectantly at the entity that was now positioned in the centre of the portal, which was by now almost as wide as the chamber itself. Suddenly, a series of loud pings erupted from the speaker system.  

On the other side of the portal, the being stopped moving for a moment, then rotated slightly. Thin tendrils of light slowly uncoiled from what resembled petals and focused on a point directly in front of it. Then came another chilling shriek, longer than the first albeit more varied in pitch. Dempsey was stunned. Almost ecstatic, he keyed in another command and more pings sounded from the speakers. This drew another response from their guest, which resumed its gentle fluctuations in size and dimensions. 

“It’s talking,” Dempsey hushed then shouted, “It’s talking!” 

Kavanagh was terrified, “What the fuck is it saying, then?!” 

Dempsey smiled as he shrugged, “‘Hello,’ I think.” 

Kavanagh needed a moment to steady himself. Eventually, he began to giggle uncontrollably, the tension and utterly alien nature of the situation simply overwhelming him. 

“All this because you were working on network protocols, eh?” 

Dempsey turned and joined him in laughter. “Don’t forget a few gullible VCs.” 

Kavanagh just looked at him and said, “You did it. Crazy son of a bitch, you did it.” He expressed the sentiment not only to praise his friend but also because it was all he could do to inject something of normality back into his world. He was on the threshold of something altogether foreign to human experience. Reaching back to the life he knew before he set foot in the warehouse earlier that night now almost felt like phoning home and hearing the reassuring tones of a loved one’s voice on the other end. He looked back at the chamber and remarked on something that Dempsey, whose back was turned, couldn’t yet see. 

“Hey,” he chin-jutted, “I think it wants to continue the conversation.” 

Dempsey turned around. Behind the glass, the entity’s tendrils had grown in size and illumination. But more significantly, they were now tentatively extending through the portal into the enclosure itself. 

Kavanagh had just started to ask “What do you think it…” when he cut himself off after seeing Dempsey’s reaction. His friend’s expression had turned from one of childlike awe to the frozen horror of impending disaster. 

“That’s…” Dempsey stuttered “… that’s not possible.” 

Kavanagh felt a nauseating anxiety wave erupting in his chest. “What do you mean?” He said, trying to remain calm, “What’s not possible?” 

Dempsey ignored him and moved to the laptop, furiously scanning the information that Kavanagh had entered. Kavanagh quickly looked back at the portal. The entity’s tendrils had now extended further over its threshold and were approaching the glass.  

“This word,” Dempsey shouted as he pointed to the screen, snapping Kavanagh out of his fearful daze, “You’re sure it means ‘window,’ yes?” 

Kavanagh shook his head to try and regain composure. 

“It’s not a direct translation,” he stammered, as if trying to remind himself of something, “Normally it’s used to say ‘window’ or ‘portal’ but it could, in some contexts mean…” the word almost vanished in his throat as a horrifying realisation hit him, “… door.” 

The next sound they heard was not alien but given their circumstances it was no less terrifying for its familiarity. It was the sound of glass slowly cracking. 

They looked over and were greeted by the sight of one of the tendrils – now blooming into a blazing arc of light – pushing heavily against the giant reinforced pane at the front of the chamber. It was seething with energy and the light began to bleed out of the cracks that were expanding outwards like a snowflake taking form. The cracks grew louder and more frequent as the tendril applied its awesome strength. Before either man could react, the glass finally exploded outwards in giant clumps, eventually scattering across the warehouse floor. The tendril poked through the opening and its tip assumed a form similar to a headlight. It surveyed the warehouse before slowly turning in their direction and coming to a stop as it pointed directly at them. It could see them. 

“Fuck this!” Kavanagh exclaimed and moved to the killswitch. As he did so, a jolt of energy shot from the entity into the mirror ball and raced along the cables running from the chamber to the machine, which began to glow with an unnatural light as the portal’s threshold began to expand. Kavanagh’s hand made contact with the pad. He was instantly blown off his feet, as if he’d been electrocuted, and landed flat on his back. For a merciful second, he was unaware of what happened. Then his senses returned and he howled in agony as an incandescent pain ate into his left hand. He held it before his face, grasping it at the wrist. An impression of the pad had been seared into his palm and the skin on his fingers was blistering in a mockery of human flesh. He screamed again, this time a whine of anguish at the mutilation inflicted on his body. He looked up at the machine, which was thrumming with infernal intensity.  

Dempsey had watched helplessly as Kavanagh ignored his impulsive warning not to go near the machine.  

“No, damn it!” 

It was only a matter of seconds but he had briefly been distracted from what was before him as he spun round to see his friend lying on the ground, shuddering and braying like wounded livestock. 

Seconds. Then he remembered. And he turned around just in time to see it. 

Noiselessly, but with the speed of a lunging coral snake, the tendril snapped towards him. And somehow, without inflicting any physical wounds, it plunged directly into his midriff. 

He was subject to a sensation that no human had previously experienced. It could not have been described as cold, or hot, but he immediately began to convulse with shock. In that instant, his nervous system’s pitiful attempts to make sense of the alien forces now at work deep within his body could find no adequate corollary. The only approximation it could manage was an elemental, warping agony that infested every atom of his fragile being. His corporeal form remained intact but began to jerk and contort as if the very space he occupied was twisting in on itself.  

Kavanagh could only observe, horrified, what was happening to his friend. Now being levitated by the tendril, Dempsey’s eyes rolled back into his head and his mouth flopped open as he emitted a shrill, desperate cry of terror. His skin and hair began to whiten.  

Yet there was no obvious cruelty or malevolence to the tendril’s movements or behaviour but rather a kind of detached, indifferent curiosity. Almost as if it was merely examining this strange bipedal being in the same manner a child might toy with an insect it had trapped in a jar. With all his strength Dempsey finally screamed, “Help me!!!” 

The tendril began to retract towards the portal, where the entity remained positioned, Dempsey helplessly trailing behind it like a doll tied to the bumper of a speeding car.  

Kavanagh’s fear was such that he was now silently sobbing. He was that terrified child again, sitting in the corner of his bedroom with his hands clasped over his ears, begging for the torment to end.  

Dempsey again roared, “Help… me! Jesus Christ, help!” 

His friend’s cries forced Kavanagh to his feet. He summoned every trace of courage within himself and made for “Tommy.” He had to shut it down, somehow. 

Despite his injuries, he moved behind the machine, now coursing with an unnatural power and light, briefly obscuring Dempsey and the portal from view. He looked at the fuse box on the wall but could see that it too was affected by whatever had taken control of Dempsey’s invention. Mounted nearby was a fire axe. 

He picked it up with both hands. His left palm felt like it was on fire as it gripped the handle. The tool was heavier than he had imagined but he hauled it towards his quarry. On the other side, out of sight, he could hear Dempsey’s screams increasing in pitch, growing more frantic as he was being pulled towards the portal.  

“Tommy” was almost entirely covered by heaving metallic plating. The only vulnerable spot Kavanagh could identify was where the exposed circuitry entered its main body. That would be his target. 

He raised the axe and, screaming in pain, brought it down with a heavy blow on the circuits. The cables were dented and sparks flew from where he struck but the machine continued to function. The portal remained open, its ghostly wails battling with Dempsey’s cries to fill the room. 

Kavanagh struck again, successfully damaging some circuits this time and littering the area with sparks. Still the machine did its work. 

“PLEASE!” 

Dempsey’s shriek felt like icicles stabbing into Kavanagh’s ears. 

With Herculean effort, and with a roar of defiance, he swung the axe one last time. It sheared through the cabling, severing the honeycomb of exposed circuitry within. A small explosion ripped open the metallic cover on the device, knocking him backwards once more and sending fragments of burning debris flying across the warehouse. The portal rapidly began to contract and the light grew unbearably bright as Kavanagh heard a tormented cry. Within seconds the light was gone and the warehouse returned to silence, punctuated only by the quietly flickering flames of the small fires that were now breaking out.  

Kavanagh groggily pressed himself up from the floor with his elbows and moaned in discomfort. The debris had missed him by centimetres but he felt a sharp pain running down his right leg. He rose to his feet, using the axe to steady himself. There was no sound coming from the other side of the room. He took another look at “Tommy,” which was now burning but otherwise quite dead.  

“Dempsey!” He called out, staggering back towards the remnants of the chamber as quickly as he could, “Demps, man, are you there?!” 

Each step was agony. He winced and gasped as he moved. The warehouse was now illuminated only by the fires and the glow of some of the laptops, which were operating on battery power. 

“Demps, please be there!” He cried, moving as fast as his injured frame would allow. 

Finally he cleared the machine.  

That was when he saw.  

And that was when he screamed. 

———— 

Doctor Bankole held the doors open for his new colleague. The wing was quiet and it was policy to keep activity in the corridors to a minimum. He smiled politely as Doctor Cunningham hurried to catch up with him. 

“Thank you,” she said as he closed the door behind her, “Still getting my bearings.” 

“You’ll get used to it,” he said.  

They proceeded along the corridor and Bankole occasionally glanced at a tablet computer as he spoke. 

“He’s just down here,” Bankole indicated to a room at the far end, on their left, “You’re familiar with the specifics of the case?” 

Cunningham nodded, reeling off the facts from memory.  

“Charged with first degree murder, found not guilty by way of insanity, unfit to stand trial,” she said, placing her hands in her pockets, “The prosecution had insisted it was because of an academic rivalry that had turned sour. There was no previous indication of violent disposition or tendencies – no familial history of abuse – so the initial diagnosis was that he’d suffered a psychotic episode of some kind.” 

“One way of putting it,” Bankole smirked, “Just small traces of his victim’s body were found. And even then they could only identify who it was via DNA analysis. It’s assumed that he disposed of the remains by some other means. The patient didn’t stop screaming for the first few hours after responders arrived on the scene. Since then he’s not uttered a word. Not to his lawyers, not to us, nothing. We’ve not seen anything like this before. He veers between periods of catatonia and extreme agitation.” 

Cunningham asked, “Is there a trigger?” 

“Yes,” he answered, “He can’t be near any electronic device. Not these,” he said, indicating the tablet, “Not phones, not TVs, not even an analog radio. We’ve had to restrain him on more than one occasion. He’s getting the best treatment. If it wasn’t for his family’s wealth he’d have been considered a lost cause long before now. That’s why you’re here.” 

They came to a stop outside the entrance to the cell, which was securely locked. Bankole nodded towards it. 

“Some believe you’re his last chance. Do you think he can be brought back to himself?” 

Cunningham peered briefly through the observation window at the frail, withered, terrified being curled up in the bed. He had the frozen stare of a combat veteran and his skin was as grey as his patient gown. Observing him for a moment, she noticed that occasionally his eyes would dart to the corners of the room and he would flinch, as if sensing something brushing past him.  

“Well, I’m not saying it won’t be difficult. But I’ve always been of the opinion that life never closes one door…” she said before adding with a smile, “Without opening another.” 

Michael Anthony is a writer based in Dublin. Since the early Eighties, he has outlived four Soviet Premiers, three American Presidents and seven Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, proving that nobody can match him when it comes to unmitigated stubbornness. He will continue to write until someone has the common sense to tell him to stop. He lives in Fairview. Or maybe Ballybough. Or possibly Marino. One of those, anyway.