The First Edition

You realise something is up as soon as you step through the door. The Head of Current Affairs is in the office for a start, something practically unheard of before 10 o'clock. He's got that look on his face again, the concerned frown. From your desk you watch as he spends the morning pacing back and forth inside the Chief Editor's office. Their discussion seems important, serious. As the clock hits ten you decide to have your first coffee and over by the vending machine you hear evidence that something is afoot; a random phrase passed across a table quietly. “Adamson saw something.”

Who is Adamson? The name sounds familiar but you're not sure from where. Is he a source? What has he seen? You decide it doesn't matter, they're never going to let you in on it, if it's that big that the Head of Current Affairs and the Chief are chewing over what to do. Best you just get on with typing up the article about car thefts in the West End. There's a deadline to meet. The name keeps ringing around in your mind though, you feel you should know it, as if escaping you means you're somehow “insufficient”, as the Chief Editor likes to call people. As you think this you notice him staring through his office window right at you. Eyeing you, a sardonic smile cuts across his lips and curls his index finger. You're wanted.

You head to the office feeling equal parts excitement and apprehension. You're mouth is dry when you enter, causing your first words to squeak. “You wanted to see me?”

He does.

He explains you're wanted for a one on one interview with a Mister Adamson, that this individual claims to have a witnessed a crash late last night and contracted the police, who contacted the office shortly after. You've to make a report, find out if he's genuine or if he's just another old attention seeker. You agree, obviously, but you can't help feeling somewhat disappointed as if there was something bigger happening that you were missing, as if this errand was just something to get you out the office for.

You feel really surplus to requirements as you get in the car as if you're more a nuisance than a valuable employee. You've been there eighteen months give or take and they've never given you any real meat. You've never gotten your hands dirty, always dull one on one reports, usually from bewildered old folk, usually nonsense. You note the grey concrete slab of the city shift into jaundiced yellowing grass of the industrial estates on the periphery of the city. The grass becomes richer, more verdant the further it is from the factories, trees spring up, cattle graze, soon the city is miles behind, a dull grey shadow that fades as you make one last turn east. The road here is narrow, on a hillside looking down at the farmer's plains below. You recognise the area vaguely, from all the times you've passed through it to elsewhere, doing odd jobs for the Editor, investigating local interest stories, folklore, gossip, all sorts of tall tales. You expect this one will be no different as you suddenly turn onto a narrow road deep in the valley of two tree covered hills. At the end of this valley you slow, take a right onto another narrow road, this one a single rough lane, it winds through the bottom of one of the hills before coming out overlooking long flat plain at sea level, one which stretches out far and wide. Here your car's GPS alerts you that you are near your destination. Mr Adamson's house does not take long to get to from there.

It is a two storey detached home of dark brown sandstone with an attractive and well kept front garden. It looked right across the plain, where one could see tiny clusters of civilisation, a village over by the forest, a town next the left bank of a river. It is quite a view to have. The house is close to the road itself which seems barely used. As you steer into the driveway you see a man appear at the right window. He is old, bald, with glasses and bushy white eyebrows, both of which are furrowed as he sees you enter his territory.

You give him a little wave as you get out the car. He disappears from the window arriving, moments later, at the front door, he looks nervous, suspicious. You introduce yourself and the tension seems to release itself from his body. Mr Adamson asks you inside you thank him and follow.

The hallway, like most, is narrow, a stairwell taking up half the floorspace. He offers to take your coat and you decline, you don't want to stay here longer than you have to. You get the feeling this is just another waste of time and by the time you get back your report on the car thefts will have been given to someone else. In the lounge he offers a seat and you sit across from him. He hangs off the sofa by his buttocks, leaning so far forward that it looks like he might topple. The look of concern on his face is quite genuine, as ar the tears he's carefully balancing on his bottom eyelids. “I know this might sound like the rantin' of a daft auld man, I really do, but I swear whit I saw is the God's honest truth.”

“Why don't you start from the beginning?” You say, calmly, trying to exude as much sympathy as you can.

The old man looks at his shoes, or the carpet beneath and nods. “Aye, I suppose you're right, it needs tae be said.”

You pull your notepad and pen out just in case you do need to take notes and gesture for him to continue.

He does.

“Last night,” he begins, looking over his shoulder as he speaks as if searching for spies. “Last night I was sitting here, about quarter to eleven and I hear this almighty thump in the distance. I go outside and look down the road and there's this pile-up. There's six or seven of them all crashed into each other. I start walking down to get a better look, see if there's anything I can do and that's when I notice they're all military vehicles, four armoured carriers and one large articulated lorry, all painted jet black. By the time I got there the soldiers were all in a panic. They're all waving their guns and shouting into little microphones on their helmets. Something about a breach in containment.”

He emphasises breach in containment and then nods at you with wide eyes as if just revealing some secret. He's telling you to be interested. Despite yourself, you are. “Go on.”

“They get some kind of orders through and start pulling their dead and injured friends to the side of the road near the edge of the hill, while a few of them keep their guns aimed at the badly damaged cargo trailer. One of them spotted me and pointed his gun at me started shouting for me to get back and has he did so...” He pauses, searching for the right words, staring off into his imagination.

“It was like a pulse or a blast wave or something but it wasn't something I felt, it was something that happened to my mind.” He trails off when he says that, loses confidence in his story as if he's almost convinced himself it was all in his mind. He shakes his head, attempting to loose himself from that train of thought. “At least, it seems that way. Everything began to look odd, there was some weird electronic buzzing in my ears that seemed to be trying to speak, I saw something leak out of the truck, but that's not accurate either, it was invisible but somehow I could sense the shape of its form against the reality of my perceptions. It's slithering brush of limbs, it's billion tiny glaring eyes. And...” He stutters, takes a breath and a drink of water. He seems to have forgotten you are there.

“There was this overwhelming sense of murderous hatred that was so brutal that it was like having a headache every time you caught focus of it. I'm hardly making sense but it was there, I could just sense it, as if with senses I never knew I had, or perhaps the best way mine could interpret it.”

You rub your chin, intrigued. Mr Adamson strikes you as genuine, you want to hear more.

“Aye, of course… Aye. Just about then all hell breaks loose, so to speak. A siren starts up, it's blaring away urgently while the army guys are all freaking out. They start shouting about contact and firing orders even as their blasting away into thin air in bewilderment. I was about fifty yards from them so I guess whatever got out affected them a lot worse than it did me. That was when I seen one of the soldiers just ripped off the ground into the air like a rag-doll. Something snapped him in two. He was screaming as he was dropped from about thirty feet onto the road. I started walking backwards then. There was this kind of roar, something that shook the nerve endings, like a sustained and sharp blast of pins and needles, a bit like that. Three or four feet of the thing was now visible, a large rippling, cratered, tendril. I decided to go back to the house as quickly as I could, I turned and walked as quickly as I could away from the scene. I heard the men scream as whatever it was killed them all, but I don't know what happened to them. I just know I've never heard men scream like that.”

He takes another drink of water, his hand visibly shaking. He's telling the truth, at least, telling the truth as he sees it. You have to make sure how valid that is and ask him if there was anything else.

“About ten minutes later, helicopters. I watched them with their big searchlights, scour the scene. I do mean scour. Within half an hour you would never have known if the whole thing had happened, at least, if I hadn't witnessed it.”

You ask him if the black vans had any identifying information. He nods and tells you the letters you suspected he would say “A.S.F.”

Adamson is telling the truth. You know that and know now why the Editor sent you. You ask him if he can show you the place where he claims this all happened which he does. It takes about five minutes down the light tarmac slope but it gives you enough time to prepare. You both stop at an empty stretch of road, a sloped forest to your left and a wide open flatland to your right, he stretches on arm and finger out and points. “Right there.” He says.

You use the GPS on your watch to confirm the coordinates and they come up with a match. You look past Mr Adamson to the plain below and say “beautiful view though.”

Mr Adamson nods, proudly, as he turns to gaze at it. Who wouldn't? It is a stunning view. Facing his back gives you the perfect opportunity to get this finished. You twist the silencer onto the gun and aim it at the back of Mr Adamson's head. With a hissing pop a bullet slides into his skull mere inches from the barrel, it's low enough that he didn't feel a thing. The old man lands on the tarmac with a crack signifying a broken nose. You feel guilty about that, even though he's dead, even though you just killed him. You call in body collection and wait beside the dead old man for them to arrive. You look out at the plain below once more before something makes you turn and look at the forest covering the steep slope.

It's there, moving about in the trees. Something else. You are confident it will be captured again, in time. Until that moment no-one can know. There can be no contradictions to the narrative. Your editor did not send you here to report, but to do the opposite, to edit. You wanted him to take you seriously.

He Does.