Writer's Life by Eric Brown Page B

to reveal a flight of steps descending into darkness. He took three steps down, then turned and smiled at me to follow.
    "Where... where are we going?"
    "The cellar, Daniel."
    I recalled what the builder, Giles, had told me weeks ago. "The cellar? He—you... you had the cellar bricked up after the explosion."
    "All but this entrance," he explained.
    "What happened?" I asked. "The explosion—what was it?"
    He paused, regarding me. "I was writing in my study at the time. It was late, midnight if I recall. The explosion shook the very foundations of the Hall. I made my way into the cellar, through the entrance in the scullery. I..." He paused, his vision misting over as he recalled the events of over one century ago. "I beheld a remarkable sight, Daniel."
    I heard myself whisper, "What?"
    "It was the arrival here of something unique in the history of humankind," he said, and continued down the steps.
    My heart hammering, God help me, I followed.
    We came to the foot of the steps. A naked bulb gave a feeble light, illuminating a short corridor, at the end of which was a door. Cunningham-Price paused before it, took a key from his pocket and turned it in the lock.
    He looked at me over his shoulder. "I would advise you to shield your eyes," he counselled.
    Puzzled, and not a little apprehensive, I did so, peering out beneath my hand as he turned the handle and eased open the door.
    An effulgent glow, like the most concentrated lapis lazuli, sprang through the widening gap and dazzled me. I think I cried out in sudden shock and made to cover my eyes more securely. When I peered again, Cunningham-Price was a pitch black silhouette against the pulsing illumination as he stepped into the chamber.
    Trembling with fright, I followed. As I crossed the threshold I heard, for the first time, a constant dull hum, as of some kind of dynamo, so low as to be almost subliminal.
    I stepped inside and, as my vision grew accustomed to the glare, removed my hand from my eyes and peered across the chamber.
    How to describe what I saw, then?
    It seemed to me that, embedded in the far wall, was a great orb of dazzling blue-white light—like a swollen will-o'-the-wisp. It was as bright as the sun seen with the naked eye, and seemed to be spinning, constantly throwing off crazed filaments of crackling electricity; these filaments enwebbed the chamber, flowing around the walls and totally encapsulating us as we stood there in mute awe. Only then, belatedly, did I realise that the chamber was not a cellar room as such, but more like a cave, a great cavern excavated perhaps by the force of the explosion all those years ago.
    "What..." I managed at last, "what is it?"
    In lieu of a reply, he said, "When I heard the explosion I came down here forthwith—don't ask me how I knew its location. It was as if I were drawn here. I made my way cautiously down the stairs, afraid but at the same time unable to resist the impulse to investigate. Then suddenly I came upon this light occupying the space where my wine cellar had once been..."
    He stopped there, a sad light in his eyes, as if the thought of what had happened then was too much. "I... I have no idea how long I was down here. It seemed like hours, but later it came to me that only a matter of minutes had elapsed."
    He paused again, and I waited. I stared into the pulsating will-'o-the-wisp like someone hypnotised, then tore my gaze away and looked at him.
    "And then?" I prompted.
    "And then," he went on, "they communicated with me."
    I stared at him, at once wanting to disbelieve his bizarre story and yet, because of the very evidence of my eyes, unable to do so.
    "They?" I echoed.
    "Or perhaps I should say 'she'," he said. "At least, that was the form they took to approach me. You see," he went on, "I was writing a novel at the time, about a soldier's love for a young girl... And they reached into my mind, and took this image of the child, and used it." He paused there, on the verge of tears, his face