Dream Thing

With that, he led his army of friends, relatives and neighbors into the old castle, killing every living thing. Old Mrs. Tweed-Smythe died in the Red Parlor from multiple sword and scythe cuts. The maids were cornered in a linen closet and hacked with farm tools. Four purebred Himalayan cats, and their on-call groomer, were cut down viciously.

Cottingsharm’s old sword didn’t have nearly enough blood on it. “That’s all?”

“That’s not all,” said the man behind the wall in the dining hall as he slid it open to disgorge a half-dozen SAS commandos. “Drop your weapons.”

“In here!” Cottingsharm called excitedly to the others. “Here’s the fight!”

More recruits to the Cottingsharm cause entered the dining room in a hurry.

“Wait—stop! Get back!” The SAS commander was waving his submachine gun at them. This was nothing more than a bunch of civilians with old swords and new pitchforks.

Cottingsharm’s eyes were gleaming. So were the eyes of the others. It was an insane glow, and it didn’t let reality stand in its way.

Cottingsharm didn’t worry about why a team of SAS commandos was staged behind a secret wall in Loch Tweed Castle. He didn’t care about their superior firepower. All he cared about was the need to pop the balloon of anger inflating in his head.

He led the charge, swinging his family sword and shouting like a true Highlander on the attack.

“Ah, bloody hell!” said the SAS team leader. “I guess we have to fire.”

They fired their submachine guns in controlled bursts that took down Cottingsharm in an instant, along with three of his comrades in arms. The rest should have run screaming in the other direction, but they just kept coming. The SAS room-brooms blazed again.

The funny thing was, no matter how many fell, more kept coming in. Who’d have thought there were this many sheep farmers in the whole district? Then the commando’s mind did a quick assessment of the numbers and of the team’s remaining ammo.

“Christ, they’re gonna get to us,” he exclaimed. “Pull back.”

They started the armored wall moving, raising howls of disappointment from the locals, and a few of them threw themselves bodily into the opening to slow it down. The motor strained and the wall shuddered. The SAS guns went dry peppering the bodies before kicking them out of the path of the door.

Shotgun blasts filled the dining room, coming from within the ranks of the locals. The blasts chopped holes in the Scottish ranks, but tore up a pair of commandos, as well. The Scots didn’t care about their own losses and they charged en masse. The wall crunched the bones of those who got in front of it. The bodies went limp—but the wall jerked and finally stopped trying to close. Civilians scrambled through the gap.

The commandos scuttled away, but Cottingsharms were coming as fast as they could shimmy through the door to pursue the SAS.

The standoff occurred when the hundred-yard stainless-steel corridor descended into an expanded working area. The floor was steel plate and the underground chamber was filled with machines operating inside stainless-steel enclosures, some ten feet on a side. The air tasted metallic and the lights above were directed at the ceiling, which diffused it into a harsh, high-key illumination. The sounds from the steel enclosures were … unusual.

It was all unusual, and the Cottingsharms couldn’t seem to care less. They weren’t angry at steel boxes. They were angry with people. People who could fight back and make them even angrier, they hoped.

The shooting started and never seemed to stop, and all the while the steel boxes churned and hummed.

Chapter 12

Remo looked over his shoulder and asked the SEAL team leader where they were going.

“You don’t know, sir?”

“It slipped my mind. There were a lot of distractions during that phone call.”

“Oh. Loch Tweed Castle, sir.”

Remo nodded. “Oh, yeah.” He asked Chiun, in Korean, “Do they have a Loch Tweed monster?”

“Please think three times before you speak,” Chiun answered. “This will save me much wasted response.”

“Tweed would be hard to swim in, I think,” Remo added. “Maybe he only wears it to go to the pub.” Chiun tried to ignore him.

“The Loch Tweed monster, I mean. What I can’t understand is why I’ve never heard of this place. Nessie would be a nothing compared to this guy. A plesiosaur in a tweed jacket is more interesting than some old naked plesiosaur.”

Chiun glared at Remo. “What are you talking about?”

“Just passing the time.”

“What is the thing you mentioned that might or might not be naked?”

“A plesiosaur? I think it’s a kind of dinosaur that some people think survived in Loch Ness.”

“Why do you bring up the subject of this creature?”

Chiun was on edge, and he hadn’t been a minute ago. What had Remo said? “Just talking to hear myself speak. Why so interested?”

“You give credence to insane science with regards to things that survive from ancient times,” Chiun said. It was an accusation. “You must trust the past for itself, Remo.”