The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

Hello again! With this post I want to introduce you to Jack Barrow's The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil. This book is an incredible work of occult fiction and will be showcased in Magus #2. I had the pleasure to interview Mr. Barrow and will be including the interview with an extract of his book in the upcoming issue. Here is a taste of 'The Hidden Masters'! 

Our heroes, The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, have discovered a conspiracy to build casinos in the decaying English  holiday resort of Blackpool, so turning the resort into a seedy, tacky and depraved town. Having consulted the Tarot they have discovered that there is some unspeakable evil at work behind the plot.

As we join the story it is late Friday night and two of our heroes, Nigel and Geoff, have gone missing after going out to the corner shop to buy more beer. Left wondering what has happened to them Wayne and Clint have resolved to find them, suspecting that the missing magicians may have gone to Geoff’s workshop and temple housed in a nearby old converted stable block. However, Geoff omitted to tell them exactly where that is.

Chapter 7 – Illuminating Experiences

Using Nigel’s Internet telephone, Clint and Wayne searched the length of Waterloo Road for premises that might have been Geoff’s workshop. Beyond the streets of Blackpool were gardens, which backed onto alleyways, and it was up and down these alleys, known as ginnels, that Clint and Wayne now searched.

The weather had once again become inclement, so they turned up their collars to the wind and did their best to shield the phone from the rain. Occasionally, they would stop to look at the map on the tiny screen, taking shelter in some corner to shield them from the elements.

To either side of the ginnels, which were perhaps six or eight feet wide, stood sturdy red brick walls. The seemingly endless corridors of brick were broken by gates into backyards or gardens every twenty feet or so. This is the classic view of the rear of Victorian housing that can be found across much of northern England. If the Victorians did anything, they built things solidly, and this was all jolly sturdy stuff.

Here and there was a solidly built Victorian red brick shed or a disused red brick privy, perhaps now containing tools and trowels instead of the toilets once therein. In fact, this is the very origin of the term ‘built like a brick shithouse.’ Each structure was built to last, in true utility fashion, with grey slate roofs that you could park a truck on. They may not have been attractive, but like the cockroach and the weeds in my front garden, they will probably be here after the apocalypse has come and gone.

On either side, beyond the red brick walls, sheds and privies; beyond the yards and gardens, there was a row of equally indestructible red brick houses. Beyond those there would undoubtedly be a street, another row of red brick houses and another ginnel, complete with sheds and disused privies now containing lawnmowers or leaf blowers instead of long-lost lavatories. Then there would be another row of red brick houses etc., all seemingly ad infinitum.

Huddling down in a corner to get out of the weather, they stared at the small coloured screen. The light from the screen gave their faces an eerie illumination, just like the effect of holding a torch below the chin. In the light, Clint had a particularly unearthly appearance, almost a disembodied head looking at the phone.

Wayne was beginning to have doubts about their chances of success. “This is ludicrous,” declared Wayne. “There are dozens of these alleys. The workshop could be anywhere in this Cretan maze. We do not even know on which side of the road to search!”

“Ah, stay loose, man,” responded Clint with more optimism. “We’ll suss it out. We just tighten up and get down. We’ll soon get the low-down for sure, we can Google it, you dig?”

Wayne certainly didn’t dig! Instead, he just looked at Clint, tried to ignore his habit of murdering the English language; the use of a noun as a verb really grated.

“What did Geoff say? It was an old stable building? Let’s have a shufti here.” Clint carefully manipulated the cursor on the phone until he could enter a few details. “Blackpool, Historic Buildings, Workers’ Houses, and Stables, that should get us started.” Selecting the advanced options he entered a few extra words using Boolean algebraic functions to take out the pages he didn’t want. “That should do the trick.”

Soon the search engine came back with a list of eight likely pages.

“How on earth did you manage that?” asked Wayne. “Whenever I use the Interweb, I get millions of utterly meaningless pages that lead to inevitable gibberish.”

“Sure man, but you have to know what you’re doing. It’s not too much if you’re switched on. I mean, I’m not trying to be a wise-ass here, because I do have the low down of this shit, but this page should have a link to a page that will take us to what we want.”

“How can you possibly know that?” asked Wayne incredulously. “You have not even opened the page yet!”

“It’s just a matter of knowing the lie of the land. That’s all.” Clint clicked on the page, ignored the contents that talked about Blackpool’s social history, and went straight to the links page. “No, hold on, just one more link, I reckon.” He scrolled through the next page to find the links section. “If I dig this right, there should be a link somewhere down here… err… there.” He clicked through a blog that described the pet cats of a local Blackpool resident. “If I take a short-cut through this site here” —he paused as he fiddled with the cursor— “…and we’re there, man.”

There was the sound of a dog barking in the distance as Wayne looked around to see a cat running into the darkness. The wail of a police siren rose on the night wind.

“Okay, here we are.” He read from the page. “History of Transport and Haulage, Blackpool, the Early Twentieth Century.” Reading down the page, Clint quickly found a list of the locations of stable blocks and their current usage in the South Shore area of Blackpool. This was no mean feat, as this was probably the only page on the whole of the Internet that would have given the information they needed. “Right then, man,” he declared with a very determined tone as he stood up, “I’d say,” he turned left to look down the alley as he switched the browser back to the street map, “this way. Let’s take a hike, man.”

Wayne shook his head and stepped out, following Clint as he led them on a short but purposeful march down the ginnel, across Waterloo Road and into another. Clint strode ahead, his long legs carrying him easily as Wayne struggled to keep pace, his shorter legs going at twice the speed.

Soon they found themselves at a confluence of ginnels outside a red brick structure as Wayne caught his breath.

* *

“This looks like an old stable,” said Clint triumphantly as he looked at the large red brick shed in the ginnels off Waterloo Road.

Wayne pushed his nose hard up against the black windows, only to see pitch black inside.

“No, it’s too dark. I can see absolutely nothing. Do you have a torch?”

“Not with me,” replied Clint as he joined Wayne with his nose up against the window. Off somewhere in the night, they heard the sound of breaking glass followed by the barking of a dog.

“It would be advantageous to have some illumination. You are the conqueror of the shadows. Can you think of a way to light the darkness?” Wayne was referring to Clint’s patron deity. Each of The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, had taken on the identity of a patron deity as part of the process of taking a magical name. The deities they adopted bore some connection to their personal character, reflected their outlook, or the magicians simply liked the god’s taste in footwear.........