present and so many potential futures. I can give you a glimpse of any number of futures, if you like, Jack. It’d keep you safely away. And give you so many clues.’
‘To what?’
‘To everything.’
Jack looked around the room. The waiter and barman were chatting at the bar, oblivious to the scene by the windows.
‘What are you, Bilis?’
Bilis opened his mouth as if to answer, then stopped.
For the first time, Jack sensed… panic? Weakness?
‘Losing the war, Jack,’ Bilis said. ‘Maybe not the battle, but the war. This is the century, Jack, remember?’
He put his hand into his pocket and produced a locket on a chain.
Jack frowned – he was sure he’d seen that before. Where?
Bilis pocketed it again. ‘Anyway, Captain Jack Harkness, I do hope you can join me tomorrow at the grand opening of Tretarri. It’s been a party in the making for so long.’
Jack shook his head. ‘Seems to me you turned everything around real quick.’
Bilis grinned. ‘Oh my dear Captain, how little you understand. But you will. You will.’
And Bilis was gone.
So were the staff. Jack stood in the semi-darkness. The bar was shuttered, and there was no sign anyone had been in the room for hours.
My story starts with the earthquake of 1876, four years past. It was only a minor inconvenience to most, few realised what it was or that it seemed centred on my beloved Tretarri.
But I knew. I knew the truth, for there were no natural fires that night. No, instead, the great gods of the underworld tore their way through to the surface of our small planet, their eternal fights and battles spilling over into our reality.
And only I was there to pay witness to these events, to commune with the demons therein and their pitiful servants.
But I get ahead of myself. It was a normal eve, as I recall – as normal as any had been since my beloved Marjorie had been taken from me. The families of Tretarri were at St Paul’s Church, in Grangetown, but I had foresworn Our Lord and his ministries since losing Marjorie.
I stood at the heart of the village as the ground began to shake, and smoke belched from the ground.
I believed my time had come, that I would not survive the next few moments, and I began to think of Marjorie. I find it interesting that, even in those seconds of terror, not once did I offer prayer or give thought to the Lord God above.
And the streets were split asunder by a huge fire and crimson smoke, while bizarre phantasmagorias of lights and other energies could be seen amidst the smoke.
The sounds were deafening but, as I later learned, no one outside the village heard or saw anything, although the fires that night drew the attention of the constabulary and other authorities who believed it to be a straightforward fire in number 6 Coburg Street. And, in fear of my sanity and my standing, I am ashamed to say I never gave them cause to think otherwise.
I am just eternally grateful that no innocent souls were lost that night.
‘Souls’. How easily I write such words, and yet believe in them not.
I hid in the doorway of a home on Bute Terrace, lost in mute fear of that which I was seeing, as a massive hand, the size of a horse and carriage, erupted from within the vast crack that had split the road asunder. Grey, taloned – I remember every detail right down to the ridges on the knuckles, so terrified was I that it is burned upon my memory for, I fear, the rest of my days. The fearsome claws raked across the road, getting a grip to enable the rest of its foul body to haul itself upwards, the reddish smoke still crackling and dancing around above, rivulets of lights darting across its path, as if each sparkle were a life of its own.
An arm, a shoulder and then a mastiff-like head reared up, ignoring me but belching fire, snarling and retching its foulness into our air.
At the far end of the street, a second identical creature appeared, this one a royal blue in colour, in the same stage of emergence.
And that was when I observed two men, both in their later years, just standing at either end of Bute Terrace, as if standing Second for the two inhuman duellists.
I am taken with the fancy that they not only stood and dressed with the bearing of men alike but, facially, they may have been twins. I confess my attention was not on them for very long, but my instinct is to say they were identical twins. I cannot offer any evidence to back this up other than my memories of brief observation.
The Seconders for these Beasts raised their hands in unison, and the crimson energy about our heads became a whirlpool of incredible power, I could feel the air being drawn from my body and feared I would die there in the street, but the Beasts, only their heads and shoulders above ground, now turned to face one another, sending rocks and earth into the air as they did so.
The tiny lights within the crimson storm darted about, some with the Grey Beast, some garnered with the Blue Beast, and I understood that what I witnessed was beyond the ken of mortal man. Truly, I was seeing a battle of the darkest order.
Energies flew about the Beasts’ heads, although they moved little, other than to twist their heads and roar inhuman words at one another. The main warring seemed to be between the lights in the storm, the ones nearest the Blue Beast had now become solid blackness rather than the brightness of the Grey Beast’s allies. Light versus Dark.
‘Indeed,’ said a voice beside me.
I realised the Seconder for the Grey Beast was beside me. He explained he was known as Bilis Manger; he believed he embodied the Pain of the Devourer, whatever that meant. He referred to his opposite as Cafard Manger, perhaps confirming my view they were related, or twins even. I never had the opportunity to enquire, for this Bilis entrusted me with a task.
He explained that the fair City of Cardiff was home to these Beasts, and had been since the dawn of creation. Something called a Rift splintered through the land, I gathered this to be the crimson smoke about our heads, and that the two Beasts were fighting for control of it.
Or to escape it.
He passed me this book and a special pen of a kind I had never seen before. He said it would write words but I would not be able to read them back.
He said it was essential that I wrote today’s events down in this diary – and nothing else.
And that when the day was won or lost by one of the Beasts and its Seconder, I was to seal this diary up and ensure it was buried here in Cardiff with me.
I pointed out that it was likely I would be leaving Cardiff soon, that, without Marjorie, I had no reason to stay in my adopted hometown, but Bilis was insistent. It mattered not where I travelled, provided that I was buried here in Cardiff. In St Mary’s churchyard, which was in a remote part of north Cardiff.
But I should tell you of the battle – except that I am, to be honest, ignorant of what exactly occurred. A lot of growling by the Beasts and a lot of back and forth by the black and white lights.
Bilis Manger and the other Seconder did nothing until, after about five minutes, the crimson storm flared very brightly, the white lights winked away and the Blue Beast rose up higher and the Grey one vanished beneath the ground.
With a final roar, the Blue Beast beat his chest like some giant ape from the dark continents, and it too vanished through the gaping crack from whence it came and the hole sealed up, and the crimson storm was gone.
The two Seconders remained – the one I know to be Cafard walked towards Bilis. They shook hands, and, in the strangest piece of hokum ever, Cafard seemed to press against Bilis and vanish, almost as if, somehow, he were inside the man I had spoken to.
Bilis said one last thing to me.
He said Tretarri was no longer mine, nor was it for the workers. He said they should all be out of their homes within seven days, or he would not be responsible for the consequences. But I did not take this as a threat, more of
