There are certain people in our world who set themselves apart from the rest of the crowd within their respective communities. For when Dennis Towers stood watching Mr Underhill making the last preparations for the next, quite frankly insane experiment, he saw one of these people. Although Towers hadn’t grown up with him, he, like the rest of the community was well aware of the mans exploits upon their first meeting. Underhill had once been a student of the College of Runswick, and as a promising one in his initial time there, it had also put him in the watchful spot light of the church. Runswick had, for as long as anyone had known, always been focused on the study and understanding of the mysterious forces acting over Lockwood. But their scientific endeavours into the dark unknown had inevitably attracted the attention of the long established Holy Orthodoxy, and the mere notion of studying what the church considered the divine force, set into motion a fierce rivalry between science and religion.
His unending relentlessness and willingness to push both scientific and moral boundaries only grew with time as did his obsession with his studies. The college inevitably grew cautious of his already well seeded, if slightly over zealous enthusiasm which eventually led to his dismissal the following year. But it had been in the ensuing time that Towers had crossed paths with the newly named Renegade Of Runswick where he was quickly introduced to a much more, extreme, audacious way of studying Lockwood’s mysteries.

It had been only the previous day that Underhill had sent out Ashley, a young Runswick student secretly tutored by Mr Underhill, to infiltrate the church and copy a section from one of their many mysterious tomes.
“You will go to the church under the guise of someone named Lucius Aremus and ask permission to have access to their library.” He’d told the boy.
“You will show them this, they will recognise you as a student of Dalhurst Castle, they have held connections with one another for many ages but this is secret knowledge, so speak to them as little as possible about it.”
He revealed a sheaf of paper with the name Lucius Aremus written at the top and handwriting too small for Towers to discern filling the rest of the page.
“You will be led to the library, once inside, you will look for the aisle labelled The Tomes Of Balsomoth. Look along this aisle and find the tome entitled Kalubis, it will be on this aisle, do not stop until you find it, it shouldn’t be anywhere else. Open the book and find chapter 13, it details alchemical processes and their relation to the Netherworld. You’re looking for a recipe called Dagons Passing, but it may be listed as Draconi Transitum.”
Ashley hurriedly scratched down notes on a paper, rejuvenating the pen from the inkwell each time his writing began to fade. He carried on, adamant he would complete his task.
“Now when you replicate this recipe, you cannot, I repeat cannot be in error. You must copy down the recipe and the alchemical process exactly as it is written in the tome to your fore. Once you are absolutely sure you have it word for word, return, and we will begin the process. For if even a single thing is wrong, the results could be disastrous, beyond that of which even I could conjecture.”
Towers had begun to feel unusually anxious when the boy returned for he was not himself. Among many things he’d mentioned unusual energies surrounding the hallowed tome, that he’d been communicated with by what he called, voices from the other side. But Underhill, as always, saw this as a reason only to go on, to unravel the mystery.
Although Underhill kept his latest project veiled in secrecy from the rest, the lad had gained measure enough of just what Underhill had planned. He came over with an unmistakable seriousness before explaining to Towers.
“As you probably already know, both The Orthodoxy and Runswick are aware that there are certain….. passages in this world that can, under the right circumstances, gain one access to the Netherworld. Now everything I said yesterday when I returned, was true. That tome, it’s veiled in some mysterious power, I heard voices communicating with me…..from the other side. Now there are many ways to achieve this passage, and alchemy is one of them. Do you understand me?”
Towers knew damn well what he meant, the man was going to attempt to pass through and into the Netherworld. Every instinct told Towers it was a terrible idea but Mr Underhill, in all his excitement, simply couldn’t be bargained with. But afterwards, Underhill had proceeded to hand Towers a paper, a list ingredients to collect from the apothecary. Wolfsbane and Celandine were two of the more normal ingredients. But it was the Void Salts that seemed to make it all seem much more real, plausible and scarily doable. Void Salts were a salt extracted from a strange aquatic plant called Null Root that was only known to grow in Lockwood’s Longfin Pond over on the west side of the city. The place was reportedly home to all manor strange and unearthly beings but science had yet to have captured any live subjects. The place however was steeped in tales of mystery and occult and the fact that the church held a vigil there once every six months only supported the notion that the place was indeed home to things unknown. The plant itself glowed with a strange crimson light in the dark, but the most impossible and well known fact about it was that it was known to emit an audible sound. A strange ringing noise that flowed gently through the air like the wings of a butterfly was what had made it so well known throughout the city. The church had tried growing it in their own gardens and ponds but all attempts to propagate the species anywhere else had failed. That in itself supported the theory that Longfin Ponds mysterious power had somehow given way to the Null Root that grew there.

But the time of the experiment had soon arrived and Mr Underhill had been as excited as ever upon the arrival of Towers and Ashley for it was to start soon. But now the time was here, Towers felt a strange uncertainty, a mortal fear of unknowable horrors, something he’d yet to have experienced in his time with Underhill. But still, he let the man continue as he busily voiced the briefing to the two of them.
“I have the potion already made, as the scriptures state, a time after consuming the potion the subject will be given passage through to the other side. It also states that the positioning of the traversal is also very important. The subjects location must one with a strong amount of Void Energy present for if it is weak, the traveller can be transported to the lower astral plain or some other ghastly place. The location is also important because the traveller will return to this world in the exact same spot from whence they departed from.”
“So what about the presence of a strong Void Energy? How do you intend to set about that?” Towers asked.
“Fear not, the church make their own incense from a small amount of Void Salts, there was plenty left from the process. I have made enough Void Incense to last the duration, just be sure to keep it burning until I depart.”
He’d then made clear the course of action after he would supposedly leave this realm. A simple set of rules, they were to keep the Void Incense burning until he departed, and afterwards, at least one of them was to remain at the lab until he returned. Obviously no one knew of exactly how long he might be not have been of this world, but they suggested a return within 24 hours, and he told them both to abandon any hope of a return if anything longer than a week passed. The prospect scared Towers but he edged himself on under the guise of enthusiasm, for they were on the cusp of scientific greatness.
Underhill brought out the Dagons Passing potion and placed it on the desk. The mixture glowed that odd reddish hue that the Null Root plant emitted, and on closer inspection, Towers would have even insisted he could hear the characteristic ringing sound reach his ears as well. Laying down on the floor the incense paraphernalia, Underhill insisted the necessity of burning the Void Incense long before the ingestion of the potion in order to attract the sizable Void Energy needed. Time passed and the smokey incense filled the air, the energy it conjured became palpable, as if there were another, most unearthly presence there with them. The sense of another being in their midst slowly grew until reaching its unexplainable apex. Towers could have sworn a short black clad figure walked past a book shelf on the rearmost wall of the lab, then to his and everyone else’ shock, one of the shelved volumes worked itself loose from the case and flew several feet through the air to land on the floor. Their startled reaction was then cut short by another oddity. A painting of the musing Charles Darwin was then sent crashing to the floor by some unseen force. The frame splintered in several directions across the floor, the tiny shards of wood caught the light like splintered fragments of bone awash on the shore.
“I believe we’re ready.” Underhill announced as he approached the chair in the middle.
Towers became acutely aware of the sensation that they had awoken, or in someway disturbed some aspect of Lockwood’s mysterious powers. That they had summoned the alien spirit of some inconceivable entity, and that by demonstrating its powers, it was inviting them to share their reason for summoning it. Not one of them spoke of seeing something concrete, something real, but Towers knew they all felt it, the presence of something else there with them.
Underhill then sat in the chair, the potion now in one hand. “Now, we’re clear on the rules here yes?”
“Indeed.” Towers replied as Ashley nodded in time.
“For once I consume this concoction, things will have been set in motion that we cannot undo.”
Towers knew already things had already been set in motion, and as far as he was concerned, whether they were to stop right then would have made no difference. But he looked on hopefully, a slight smile coming to his mouth as he met Underhill’s eyes. He nodded once, then the ardent researcher swigged back the small amount of scarlet liquid in one mouthful.
He set the beaker down on the floor before sitting up straight in the chair.
“Now we wait.” Underhill said calmly.
Minutes passed by with nothing unusual to speak of, Underhill becoming increasingly more still and placid as time went. Within five minutes however, Underhill was sat completely motionless staring at the wall. Attempts from both Towers and Ashley failed to rouse any kind of reaction from the man, he just sat, staring blankly, without even blinking at the wall. But it had been from that point onward that the events went beyond anything either of them could have imagined.

While Underhill sat motionless, both Towers and Ashley noted to one another how the room began swaying in a way that defied logical explanation. For neither of them had consumed the potion, yet they were quite possibly experiencing its effects. For Towers, the room swirled into a nightmare of misshapen beings, the floor seeming to disappear before he fell through an infinite void of blackness to unknown depths. Never before had he had such a true sense of a void, of being surrounded by complete nothingness, and that nothingness stretching off as far as his eyes and his mind could conceive of. The turn of events seemed difficult to discern as his very perception of time seemed to have been meddled with. He only then remembered being back in the lab, everything was as it was before, only now, he was sure he was experiencing what Ashley had suggested he’d experienced while copying from the Kalubis at the church’s library. Towers noted beings with no terrestrial analogue walking amongst them in the room. Entities not from Earth, entities that bared no resemblance to humans in any shape or way. But he could see them, right there in front of him in the lab. He was positive he was somehow perceiving a kind of alternate reality, as if a new frequency had been made perceptible to him. But in that, these beings seemed able to perceive him as well, they set their alien eyes on him, pointing to him, their voices unearthly, of tones he’d never heard before. Ashley had quite obviously been experiencing the same as he, for he looked around him at the same unknown quantity. It was at that point that for some reason, Towers became acutely aware that these beings had been there the entire time, that somehow they’d both been granted, if only temporarily, be ability to see the cosmic truth, The Sight, as it was commonly referred to as.
They’d both noticed Mr Underhill now becoming increasingly restless, but still remaining in his mindless state. The events had escalated quickly as he then started thrashing wildly as if possessed by the spirit of a vicious animal. The guttural growls seemed mostly inhuman and the mans behaviour became that more akin to an angry animal that a humans. Both Towers and Ashley had quickly managed to move Underhill into the small utility room of the lab in fear of him causing unwanted destruction. Closing the door, his thrashing had become a cacophony of guttural screams and wild movement as if a creature of substantial size was pacing the room angrily. Ashley put his hands on his head covering his ears, had despair taken him?
“We shouldn’t have done this!” He shouted.
“We shouldn’t have let him go on with this madness! Now look!”
Towers speculated to himself that Underhill had transformed much like many of the people affected by the Void Energy did during the various astral phases. The ferocity and aggression emanating from the utility room seemed, scarily enough, more akin to that of a beast rather than a man of science like Underhill. With each passing moment he felt a morbid sense of infinite terror permeate every aspect of him as he just then, in that moment, realised letting Underhill go on with this, was a mistake, possibly of monumental proportions. Between both Towers and Ashley, a horrific sense of terror began steadily mounting between the pair of them. The uncertainty of Underhill’s ailment reached to the innermost depths of human conception, for nothing was promised, no duration stated, and in the fierce thrashing, even the integrity of the utility door came into question. But it had been when Towers had feared that despair may have taken him, that the room, the entire lab suddenly fell silent save for Ashley’s dismayed cursing.
Both looking round to the door after glancing to each other, their faces a mirror of each others expression as the sudden silence seemed as disturbing as the chaos which had preceded it. There was then nothing, no movement, no noise from the other side, no reason to believe that Underhill had in fact passed through and into the Netherworld. But his momentary assumption was thwarted as a light rapping started at the door, two very light taps, then two more but slightly heavier.
“Towers? Ashley?” A voice said to their astonishment.
“What’s going on? Why am I in here?”
The utter confusion took Towers for a few seconds before opening the door to a reveal a human, if extremely frazzled looking Underhill standing on the other side. He’d quickly reentered the lab insisting to the pair of them he was in fact alright and the experiment had to continue for he’d had no experience of passing through dimensions. Upon questioning him as he seated himself again, he’d revealed to Towers that he’d had no recollection of the beastly tumult he’d unknowingly unleashed in the utility room. But it had been before the man said anymore he suddenly sat back in the chair, his eyes above to the stars.
“Oh…..wait…I think I’m passing over.” He announced.
Towers than watched as the most peculiar spectral anomaly began to distort the vision of the sitting Underhill. The man sat motionless, but it were as if his body were somehow, by some alien, unknowable force, was de-materialising and moving on to parts unknown like the soul of a deceased. His image became vague, faded in the chair like a photograph that had seen too much sunlight. Towers soon discerned the wall behind him for the man was quickly disappearing, seemingly into thin air. Ashley had watched completely aghast at the impossible miracle unfolding in front of them as for the first time, his face turned into a slight smile at the marvel of science. It had been within moments that Mr Underhill had gone completely, the chair now sat impossibly empty. It was no mere illusion of invisibility for Towers watched as Ashley waved a hand through the very space where the man had been sat before sitting in the very chair that the miracle had happened in. Understandably, the pair of them felt little in the way of celebration after what had transpired prior to the miracle, but Towers instantly registered the growing uncertainty of Mr Underhill’s fate.

After the event, the two of them proceeded with their plan as Underhill had instructed. There was to be either of them present in the lab until the traveller returned unless more than a week elapsed without a re-entrance. They’d agreed for the first night that Towers would stay until mid morning the next day when Ashley would return and take his shift until nightfall the following evening. Soon, the hours of the night began ticking by as Towers wondered to himself in the solitude of the night what feats of glorious impossibility Mr Underhill might have been experiencing. Could he have been still on Earth? Or was he truly on another world somewhere? He’d wondered if the man was in fact even on a physical plain of existence at all, for as he’d already seen for himself, there were still things in this very space on different frequencies that were unseen to ordinary eyes.
The hours of the night slipped by as for a while he nodded off in short periods of sleep before awaking in the dark to refill the oil lamp and pace the lab several times to keep awake. The sun had eventually risen uneventfully over Lockwood as the lab remained silent save for Ashley’s return in mid morning just as planned. Upon his return Towers had promptly insisted urgent need of nocturnal sleep before retiring home to sleep the hours of the day away. Through his tiredness, not a thought had interrupted his stream of consciousness as he slipped into a fitful slumber alone on his bed. Not even his sleep had been pervaded by unusual dreams as he might have expected, for the lack of sleep had taken him completely.
He’d returned to the lab before nightfall to catch up with Ashley before he made off for home. The lad hadn’t experienced the same sleep deprivation as he and so seemed far more alert than he’d initially expected. They spoke a while of Mr Underhill, speculating where he may have been, what he might have been doing. Thoughtful suggestions as to what he’d seen in the far away place he’d journeyed to captured the pair for a fair while before Ashley began his evening retirement. But as they spoke, a faint but abnormally deep rumbling permeated the air. Increasing from the smallest, most unnoticeable tremor, it grew ominously into a deafening hum of ear splitting proportions. Looking around, Towers even caught sight of a glass beaker making its way across the desk before tipping onto its side and skittering across before falling to the floor. Ashley had quickly ran outside, for the sound could quite easily have been a parade of horse drawn carts making their way down the road. But by the time the lad returned, Towers knew the sickening noise had become something far more than a mere horse and cart could conjure.
“There’s nothing outside!” The lad shouted over the noise.
“I don’t know where it’s coming from!”
But Towers knew his statement was quickly becoming an impossible paradox. For both of then knew from where, but not why the noise had descended on them. Their attention was then drawn toward Underhill’s chair that still sat in the clearing just as it had been when the man departed. A strange thin mist tinted with the reddish hue of the Null Root surrounded the still empty chair as second by second, its intensity increased. Their initial awe soon turned to horror as the chair began creeping along the floor at its own accord before suddenly and violently was sent through the air. The thing had been acted upon with force enough to send it clear across the room where it smashed to pieces on an adjacent oak bookshelf. Splintered wood peppered the floor before the pieces were swept up into the air and began swirling in a miniature vortex whos inception defied any law of physics. The cyclone intensified around the area where the chair had sat before Towers entertained the thought that Mr Underhill may have already been making his return voyage. But what came next blew every assumption, everything he’d thought possible into oblivion as the impossible, once again became possible, and all too tangible.

Through that hellish vortex came a figure of disproportionate and warped humanities. A terrifying mass far taller than even the tallest of men and with limbs as long as a person itself materialised to there fore. The fog of the Void lifted to reveal the mutant like fiend as it began lumbering a few steps hither and tither before realising its surroundings. For a few short moments Towers got a look at the horrid thing with its long nail like claws and tortured expression that seemed strangely reminiscent of a humans.

The creatures skin seemed a dark green only a shade or two from being black that as far as Towers could discern, didn’t reflect as much light as one might have initially thought. Its body was a bulbous gut like mass whos groin appeared to bare no form of genitalia and its limbs with enough spread to suggest it would have excelled at climbing in its natural environment. But it was the face, the face that shocked and horrified Towers the most. Though vaguely human, its features had been spread thin as if stretched out through the Void. Eyes as wide as cricket balls, an overly large mouth lined with broken and discoloured teeth shown themselves as the face contorted into a machination of unspeakable hostility. The thing suddenly growled the most unreal, inhuman noise either of them had ever known before raising its clawed hands. Ashley ran back for the door first, his reaction suddenly stirring the disgusting abomination into fierce action with speed far beyond that of which its size would suggest. Towers took several steps back slowly as the thing darted across the lab in pursuit of the young man before letting out a terrifying and ear splitting death howl. Claws extended, it reached then swiped for Ashley in mid stride. Never before had Towers ever seen claws used with such force, a swipe so fast his eyes hadn’t registered their attack until Ashley’s body was sent in two messy directions. But it was the lads deathly and pained scream before impact that shocked Towers the most. His voice suddenly cut off, never to be heard again before his insides were pulled from his torso through razored claws and sent streaming through the air above Towers’ head. The hideous creature seemed to take a sickened pleasure in quickly tearing apart the body as shreds of his clothing wafted through the air like leaves caught in an autumn gale. Towers, now with tears in his eyes simply lost control of himself and ran for the door that had cost young Ashley his life. Behind him, the evil predator swung its mass about the lab sending shelving to the floor and various glass beakers shattering everywhere. Towers didn’t stop, for in his hurried confusion, knew this was very nearly the end of his days. He ran like a madman for the exit that would bring him to the relative safety of the streets of Lockwood as the beast progressed through the corridor behind him. But he’d just ran, ran like mad and hadn’t even looked back once, even out on the street he’d just kept running, for he literally had the devil from the Void chasing him. He’d made his way though a series of small back alleys that vaguely led toward his house and still hadn’t stopped, hadn’t looked back the entire way. It had only been when he’d reached his house, by some miracle without being caught, that he stopped and caught his breath.

The events of that night continued to elude any explanation that Towers could conjure. The venture had been intended to gain insight into the mysteries of the Netherworld, maybe even find this worlds connection to that of the Void Energy. Instead two people had been killed and the lab destroyed, not to mention that yet another horrendous monstrosity had been set loose that, once discovered, would likely become the next article of the church’s worship. Struggling to conjecture, he battled with his own theories as to what had happened to Mr Underhill. Had the hideous creature that had returned truly been the man he’d once known, transformed and disfigured into a messy abomination of violence? Or had Underhill simply been captured or killed upon arriving in the Netherworld. As far as they’d known they had carried the preparations out correctly, but even so, it brought into question the very nature of the alternate plain they called the Netherworld.
Somewhere out there in the distance, he still heard the horrid screams of the creature from Lockwood’s spired roofs. But inside, in his mind, he still heard, everyday, the heartbreaking screams of a young man gone too early.