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Mike yawned, gazing vacantly out through the large roller door. It looked out onto the empty factory yard and the wire fence that encircled it. Beyond that was a few acres of scrubby bushland, then the outlying suburbs of the town where Mike lived. He couldn’t see much past the fence though, as it was currently half past two in the morning.

He had been working the night shift at Darrow Vale Metals for three years now. He was a machinist, several years out of his apprenticeship. Mike felt quite fortunate that he worked where he did. It was a quiet location, the work was interesting and he wasn’t worked too hard like he had been at his previous place of employment. He’d been expected to run up to seven machines at once – possible, but immensely tiring. At Darrow Vale he only dealt with three, maybe four at most.

At the moment, things were quiet. There were no big orders, and this was the latest Mike would be working for a few weeks. While he was looking forwards to having a few more hours of company while he was in the factory, he didn’t dislike being alone. Some nights were very peaceful, much like this one. Being Thursday made it all the sweeter as he only worked until six in the evening on Fridays.

The machine stopped humming and Mike turned to address it. He slid the door open and pressed the pedal to release the large bolt in the vice. Placing it on a nearby troller he took up the air gun and sprayed away errant bits of metal and dripping coolant from the vice and the tools that the machine was using. Finally, he carefully positioned a heavy chunk of metal and closed the vice. After a quick check it was secure, Mike shut the door and started the machine up. The whole changeover took about thirty seconds.

As the machine cut metal, he picked up the bolt and wiped off the coolant that dripped off it, checking for any stringy bits of metal in the thread. Satisfied, he dropped it into the box with the others. Mike was proud of the results – he had done this program himself, and his boss was pleased with it.

Returning his gaze to outside, Mike started and frowned. Out in the darkness of the bush beyond the fence he could see multicoloured lights that seemed to flit between the trees. Christmas lights? he wondered for a moment before shaking his head. By the way they were moving, they couldn’t be. The cord would get tangled up,for one thing.

Mike frowned as the lights blinked out, leaving only darkness. He felt uneasyness welling up within him. What exactly was going on here? Even though he was half expecting it, he still started when they blinked into existance again. This time, he noted with a shudder, they seemed to be closer. In fact, so close that they were reflected in a puddle left over from a rain shower that afternoon.

The machine stopped, and Mike quickly went through the process of reloading it. When he looked back up, the lights were gone again. A shiver ran down his spine. Some kind of firefly? But it made no sense. Fireflies were only one colour, at least as far as Mike knew. Even so, they weren’t native to this area.

Forty minutes later, Mike was driving home. He hadn’t seen any more of those lights, but he had a creepy feeling running up and down his spine. All of a sudden he was reminded of something Tom Schneller, one of the older fellows at the factory had talked about once. Tom had lived in Darrow Vale most of his life and had been one of the original workers at the factory.

*

“Well, here’s the deal. Back before those suburbs got too big, that was some real wild bush.” Tom took a long swallow of coffee to wash down the crumbs of his jam drop. “And in the middle of those was this old house. Now, this house had supposedly been the home of a witch back before even I was a boy.”

“Didn’t know there were even any other humans before that.” said Bill Fellows, the technical writer/drawer, a slight grin on his face.

Tom gave him the finger as he continued. “Anyway, apparently she talked to the fairies, and they made her immortal.”

“Hang on a moment,” Mike interjected “You said she was dead. If she was immortal, she’d still…”

“Details! Always get in the way of a good story. So she spoke to the faeries, and they’d steal little babies for her, to put in her witches’ brew.” Tom was about to continue, but he glanced at his watch. “Ah, I’ll finish the story later. Time to get back to work, boys.”

That was on Friday. The next Monday, Tom didn’t come into work. He’d died of a stroke in his sleep on Saturday night.

*

Now, Mike couldn’t get the idea out of his head. Faerie lights. But faeries were good, weren’t they? Not if they stole babies to be thrown into a witches’ cauldron. With a shudder, Mike reached down and switched on the radio. A few good songs would make him feel much better, he knew. Except that the radio wasn’t working.

Frowning, Mike twiddled with the dial, keeping one eye on the road. It was static on all channels. He started as one of them elicted a high pitched screech of radio noise, and almost drove off the road. Steadying the car, he switched off the damn thing while telling himself it had nothing to do with the lights.

He almost had a heart attack when the headlights of a car appeared behind him. There was little warning, as if someone had driven with no lights to get up behind him undetected. It was crazy, but not beyond the realms of impossibility. Then the two beams started moving back and forth, up annd down. What kind of a car was it?

Mike sped up a little, ignoring the lights. He was slightly disconcerted to notice that they easily kept pace, not falling behind for a second. It occurred to him that they had to be an excellent driver to be so close and keep at a constant distance from him. Mike started to calm down a little, then all chances of rational thought went out the window. The lights exploded into thousands of multicoloured glowing points, flitting around his car, surrounding it.

The engine died, and as the car coasted to a stop, Mike could only sit there with a white-knuckle grip upon the steering wheel. Here he was, on a dark road in the middle of the bush with thousands of small points of light floating around his car like a cloud of freak fireflies. What was he going to do? Was there anything he could do?

The lights grew more intense, and Mike shut his eyes a moment before oblivion took hold of him.

*

Andrew sighed as he sat down in his chair. He’d just returned from his lunch break and now only had half of the day to weather out now. He typed his password into his computer and the screensaver blinked away. He looked at his half-finished report and made a face before getting back to work on it.

The phone only had time for one insistant ring before he’d reached over and picked it up. “Andrew Horton speaking.”

“Hey Andy, it’s Brad. Me and Sylvia have been checking out the site.”

Andrew brightened considerably. This was something that had the potential to be interesting. “Did you find anything that suggests paranormal activity?”

Brad hesitated on the other end before replying. “Yeah we did. I don’t think it was just a manifestation either. Sylvia isn’t getting any psychic echoes, and there isn’t any ectoplasmic residue. What we did find were a few four-toed prints that match the ones that we found out at Darrow Vale.”

“Near where the machinist disappeared? You’re sure?”

“Positive. We’re taking a cast now. The prints lead into the bush. We’re going to take a look, see if we can follow them.” replied Brad.

“Alright. Let me know as soon as you find anything, especially anything like the marks on the machinist’s car.”

“Oh yeah, speaking of. Did Max figure out where they originated from?”

“No.They’re completely new, which means we’ve never dealt with something like this before. Watch yourselves out there, alright?” warned Andrew. Brad replied in the affirmative and hung up. Leaning back in his chair, Andrew scratched his chin. For some reason, he had a sense of forboding welling up inside him.

*

The tracks ended at the ruins of a small house. It was in a clearing overgrown with tall grass and scrabby bushes. The tin roof had long been blown off and lay tangled in some trees at the edge of the clearing. The door hung off its hinges and when Brad stepped through he heard Sylvia gasp. He turned around and raised a brow.

“You alright?”

Sylvia looked around, her eyes wide with obvious fear. Brad could never get over her dress style which gave her the look of some kind of medieval gypsy. She wore a dark purple blouse with puffy sleeves under a dark brown bodice and a matching skirt that stopped at her knee-high brown leather boots. To top off the ensemble she also wore a purple hooded cloak edged with embroided symbols of the zodiac.

“You’re staring at me again.” she murmured quietly, a faint smile touching her lips and causing some of the fear to drain from her eyes. Brad shifted his weight from foot to foot, feeling himself blush slightly.

“Er, well…” It didn’t help that she happened to be damn good looking, though he wouldn’t admit that to her. He couldn’t very well tell her it was due to her outlandish outfit, since he stood out with his dark fatigues and combat harness worn underneath his field jacket. He also sported a pair of combat boots with a knife sheathed on his right boot and wore a pair of fingerless leather gloves. And of course, both of them had a standard utility belt with a radio and a few special neccesities.

She looked around, the fear returning. “There’s a lot of… Hatred around here. Terrible things happened here, but…” Sylvia frowned. “For some reason, I feel that whatever did happen… It had to happen otherwise something much worse would have occurred.”

Possessing no psychic ability of his own, Brad took her word for it. “Think it was cult activity?” He slowly went over the concrete fondation of the house. It was overgrown with weeds and some small bushes that had managed to force their way up through the cracks.

“I don’t think so. It was definitely some kind of ritual, and it was done by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.” She closed her eyes, stepping through the door.

“Well, there’s no evidence of ritual activity on the floor.” Brad paused, kneeling in a corner and examining a gap within the crumbling brick wall. “Hey, there’s something…” He trailed off, hearing an odd cracking sound from below him. Sylvia’s eyes widened.

“Brad, move!”

He gasped in surprise as the thin shell of concrete he was standing on broke and he fell down the hole in the floor. He instinctively grasped for the walls. A ladder on one side was far too old, the wooden rungs breaking off from the force of his fall. Using his hands and feet however, he managed to slow his descent to a stop. The shaft on each side was rough hewn stone here. From below came the stench of stale, dirty air.

A flash of purple in the circle of light above him caught his attention. “Brad! I can’t believe it, I… I didn’t see that coming at all! I’m sorry, I-”

“Don’t worry about it. Can’t catch ‘em all.” Brad reassured her as he started to work his way up the shaft. As he travelled, he noted that the wall didn’t seem to be man-made. He was certain that some of the marks could only be described as teeth marks. That left him feeling vaguely disquieted.

“We might have a Burrower here.” His words were greeted with a curse and he smiled tightly. He hated smoking out burrows too. “Though this just might be old ground, since there was a ladder going down here.”

Sylvia gave him a hand when he got to the top, and Brad climbed free of the hole with a grunt of thanks.

“Brad, the hole is all very well but what about the creature that made those prints? It came into the house, but it couldn’t have gone out, there are no other prints. And come to that, how come these are the only prints we’ve seen?” Dread suddenly flooded Sylvia’s eyes and she went grey. “Oh my… Brad, we have to go, NOW!”

He didn’t question her. They’d been partner for far too long and he was far too smart to hesitate. He grabbed her by the arm and rushed out of the house, towards the edge of the clearing. Sylvia was weakened, as she sometimes was, after particularly lucid and horrifying premonitions. There also seemed to be something that drained her strength. She started to recover only as they left the bush.

Sitting in the car, she took small sips of water from a bottle while Brad drove. He gave her a quick glance, frowning. “Don’t worry, Sylvia. You’ll be fine. What did you see?” He gave her another glanced after a few minutes of silence. She was staring at him with horror in her eyes that he’d rarely seen. It shook him up to see her like that. “Sylvia… What-”

“I saw the end of the world, Brad. It’s starting now. Right now. Today, it…” She trailed off and broke down, sobbing. Her words chilled Brad to the bone. He’d never heard her speak like that and did not believe she was in any way unbalanced. And she was a damn experienced psychic – whatever she had seen must have been terrible to put her in that state.

*

Andrew sighed with relief as he hit the ‘SEND’ button on the fax machine. The final report relating to the Carraville cult massacre was finished, and he could put that whole grisly mess behind him, and even get back out in the field soon. But not yet. He still wasn’t ready, he knew. At night he still heard the screams, still smelled the burning flesh and felt the stinging corruption of what had been summoned.

United Special Investigations employees were supposed to be able to put that kind of thing behind them. Andrew knew that he would, in time. He was just thankful for the mental conditioning he’d been put through. Some of the survivors would be scarred for life – pysically and mentally – after that night.

Apart from being a truly horrific experience, the coverup involved with the Carraville case had been a nightmare. Andrew remembered one time, years ago, when he’d been speaking to his direct superior about why it was important to cover up that kind of thing.

*

“Yeah well, in the end it’s all about funding, isn’t it?” Max took a long swig of beer, wiping his mouth before continuing. “The government gives us some of that, but in return we need to cover it. If we don’t cover up properly, the government withdraws funding and BAM. There goes a large chunk of our income.”

“But why is it so important for them to cover it up? I mean, if people knew about what kind of threats there were, wouldn’t they be better able to avoid them?” quizzed Andrew with a frown. Brad, sitting nearby, had laughed at that comment.

Max took pity on Andrew, chuckling. “It was our company president that suggested it, and here’s why. The really nasty things that happen are usually spaced out – maybe two or three really bad ones per year. If that was that, then it wouldn’t be so bad. But there’s bad years. Sometimes you get up to ten – nope, not lying. Back in ‘99, just when Brad here joined, we had… Hell, thirteen? Fourteen?”

“Twelve.” corrected Brad, throwing his emply beer can into the trash can and popping open a fresh one.

“Yeah, twelve. Felt like more, but yeah. That would cause a panic, they happened within a six month period. And ultimately, no one wants to be told that there’s a reason to be afraid of the dark, do they? But that’s basically the reason we have to keep a low profile.”

*

It made sense to Andrew now. If people knew just how many cults and creatures there were that lurked in the dark… Well, sometimes it was better off not knowing. He knew that he certainly wished he didn’t sometimes – especially lately. Heading back to his desk, he checked his watch. Three o’clock. He wondered idly how Brad and Sylvia were doing.

At three-thirty he got tired of playing Solitaire and instead gazed out of the window. Friday afternoons were always damn boring. When the phone rang, he answered it quickly. “Hello?”

“It’s Brad. Go to Yellow, now. Something terrible could be abou-”

“It IS going to happen!” interrupted a half-hysterical voice that Andrew recognized as Sylvia’s. He felt an icicle tickle his spine. He’d never heard her like that before. What on earth had she seen?

Brad’s voice broke in. “Just go Yellow. We’re on our way back. Let me know if-”

Just like that, the connection was terminated.There was no warning, it simply cut out. Frowning, Andrew pushed the call button a few times. With a feeling of impending doom he put the phone down and turned to go manually activate Yellow.

But he was distracted by the building outside his window. It had been, impossibly, enveloped in what looked like vines. It wasn’t the only one, either. He could see them growing with impossible speed up over others. He saw the vines crash through windows, strangle antennas. His attention turned from the buildings and to the skies. The afternoon sun was rapidly turning red as blood, the city bathed in the crimson light.

“So much for Yellow… Red, dammit!”

He rushed to the armory.

*

Bob Billerson just wanted to get home. Fridays were early days for him, finishing at three in the afternoon rather than five. He had no plans in particular, but the less time spent travelling, the better. That said, today there had been delay after delay on the train lines. At this rate, he could have gotten home faster by walking.

He turned a page in his newspaper, muttered something about the economy and the clowns that were in charge of it. He glanced from the paper to her watch, then he heard the sound of a train coming.

“About time.” Bob grumbled to himself as he stood up. Standing behind a blond, he took the opportunity to check out her backside, nodding in approval. Then, realizing that the train was not there yet, he frowned and looked up.

Then the monsters came running out of the tunnel.

They got the people closest first. They were about five feet tall, but the crude yet deadly spears were wielded with frightning efficiency. Bob only caught a glimpse of one, with its doglike face and green skin, before he fled in panic. He shoved a few people out of his way, the screams of the dead and dying behind mixed with those of the terrified survivors.

He made it outside, but it was a nightmare here too. The pavement had been torn asunder, seemingly all around the building across the street. Thick, leafless vines grew up out of the gaps. He could see them growing rapidly up the side, smashing through the windows, enveloping the building. One panicking pedestrian ran too close and a vine grasped them around the waste.

Bob watched in horror as it sent shoots all throughout the hapless businessman. He fell to the ground, his body being reduced to jellied mush and bloodstained bones as the plant used his body as mulch.

The streets were in utter chaos. He had no idea where to go, what to do. He sat down against the wall surrounding the entrance to the train station below the street, watching people rush about in horror. All of a sudden he felt a presence next to him, and he looked up into the grinning face of one of the green skinned, dog faced things. It laughed and thrust the spear into his chest.

It ended quickly for Bob Billerson. He was one of the lucky ones.