By Adam Browne
Our hiding place, which the others call the Annex, contains a second secret behind the plaster: a deserted laboratory left by a physician of dreadful curiosity.
By candlelight I write my thoughts to you, Kitty, my diary, while Margot assists with calculations and keeps the others unsuspecting. Mr. Dussel, the dentist, has quietly persuaded certain wires and galvanic plates to run with electrical current. So we prepare while outside the chestnut tree stirs in the wind and the city groans beneath boots.
If the world has produced monsters, we must answer in kind.
In the present circumstances it was not difficult to acquire the anatomical materials we required. Our work proper began and continued into the small hours of the night. Margot stitched with delicate hands, Mr. Dussel manned the cables, and I operated the terrible apparatus the vanished doctor left behind.
But, Kitty, it worked! A flash of charge! A groan from the figure upon the table! It gasped — and shuddered into motion!
It sat upright, its countenance dreadful yet solemn, as if it was already aware of the injustice that had called it forth.
It rose from the table, Peter unbolted the door, and the being vanished into the night.
Now Amsterdam whispers of a giant shadow moving through the streets, stories of cells broken open, prisoners fleeing, and patrols scattered like leaves before a storm.
And stranger rumours have followed: soldiers found broken in deserted alleys, guardhouses smashed, a trail of terror heading eastward — the terror that hunted us has become the hunted. Some say the creature walks towards the place where the darkness gathers most thickly. Perhaps it will not stop until it has followed that darkness to its source, at the bunker in Berlin.
About the Author
Adam Browne, born in the early 1960s, lives in Melbourne.
He is an award-winning writer, and has published numerous sff short stories and three books.
His stories have won the Aurealis and Chronos awards, and two, 'Orlando's Third Trance' and 'Space Operetta', have been adapted as films, the latter, titled 'The Adjustable Cosmos', screened at the Sydney International Film Festival and the Anima Mundi animation festival.
'How the Ship got Heavy-Laden, by Saltpetre Cragg, Pirate and Journalist' will be part of the book 'The Ship's Big Steaming Log', which accompanies the play 'Bladderwrack", opening in Melbourne in November this year (2025).
Brian Biswas lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
Ed lives with his wife plus a magical assortment of native animals in tropical North Queensland.
Sarah Jane Justice is an Adelaide-based fiction writer, poet, musician and spoken word artist.
James Walton was a librarian, a farm labourer, and mostly a public sector union official.
Emma Louise Gill (she/her) is a British-Australian spec fic writer and consumer of vast amounts of coffee. Brought up on a diet of English lit, she rebelled and now spends her time writing explosive space opera and other fantastical things in
Geraldine Borella writes fiction for children, young adults and adults. Her work has been published by Deadset Press, IFWG Publishing, Wombat Books/Rhiza Edge, AHWA/Midnight Echo, Antipodean SF, Shacklebound Books, Black Ink Fiction, Paramour Ink Fiction, House of Loki and Raven & Drake
My time at Nambucca Valley Community Radio began back in 2016 after moving into the area from Sydney.
Tara Campbell is an award-winning writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University's MFA in Creative Writing.
Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).
Merri Andrew writes poetry and short fiction, some of which has appeared in Cordite, Be:longing, Baby Teeth and Islet, among other places.
Alistair Lloyd is a Melbourne based writer and narrator who has been consuming good quality science fiction and fantasy most of his life.
Tim Borella is an Australian author, mainly of short speculative fiction published in anthologies, online and in podcasts.