The Unhinged Chronicles of Jimmy McGroggan: Descent into Inventive Madness
Chapter Two — A Whiff of Trouble
The morning after the village fair, Ballykillduff awoke to the sound of sneezing goats.
Not just one or two—every goat in the parish was in full nasal rebellion. They sneezed in fields, sneezed in barns, and in the case of Mrs O’Shaughnessy’s prize nanny, Brigid, sneezed directly into the window of Paddy Munnelly’s kitchen, knocking over his porridge and part of his faith in breakfast.
The smell had arrived in the night, too. A scent that had seeped in under doors, slid into teapots, and made itself at home in the deepest corners of people’s wardrobes. It was the smell from yesterday—the burnt-custard-and-fear perfume that Jimmy McGroggan’s machine had coughed into existence—but now it was thicker, more deliberate, as if it had learned how to flex its muscles.
By eight o’clock, half the village was congregated outside Jimmy’s workshop, which leaned against the main street like a drunk remembering he used to be a library. Its corrugated roof rattled faintly, even though there was no wind.
Councillor Breda Kavanagh stood at the front, arms folded so tightly that her sleeves had begun to whimper. “McGroggan,” she said, knocking on the warped door, “open up before I bring the goat in with me.”
The door swung open a cautious inch. One of Jimmy’s eyes appeared in the gap, wild as a conspiracy theory. “Are they here?”
“Who?” Breda asked.
Jimmy glanced up and down the street before replying in a whisper. “The squeaks.”
Breda pushed the door fully open. “The squeaks are in our heads, not in the street. And so is that stink you’ve left behind. Explain.”
Inside, the workshop was less of a room and more of a scrapyard that had decided to study engineering in its spare time. Contraptions lurked under tarps, their outlines suggesting that whatever they did, it would be both impressive and illegal. A cage full of clock parts ticked in disagreement with the rest of time. A weather vane in the shape of a screaming man slowly turned to face Jimmy as they entered.
And in the far corner, the Atmospheric Hamster Harmoniser sat like an enormous guilty conscience, its glass drum misted over, its brass horn slouched forward as though sulking.
Jimmy ushered Breda inside, shoving a stack of newspapers off a chair. “I think we might be dealing with olfactory residue.”
“That’s not a real thing,” Breda said.
“It is now,” Jimmy replied. “The smell is a side-effect of resonance overload. When the hamsters hit the jollity threshold, it altered the harmonic field around their… well… happiness centres.”
“And that makes goats sneeze?”
Jimmy hesitated. “Indirectly. It makes everything sneeze. I had to shove a handkerchief up the chimney to stop the wind catching it.”
At that moment, a low hum drifted through the workshop, the kind of sound a kettle might make if it were planning revenge. Breda turned toward the Harmoniser. The brass horn twitched.
“Is it on?” she asked.
“No,” Jimmy said, a little too quickly. “It’s just… remembering.”
Breda took a cautious step forward. The smell was stronger here—hot sugar gone wrong, mixed with something that made the hairs in her nose feel philosophical.
The glass drum twitched. Inside, a thin smear of foam slid across the surface, spelling something that might have been a word, then collapsing back into goo.
“What did that say?” Breda demanded.
Jimmy swallowed. “Looked like feed us.”
Before Breda could retort, a series of faint squeaks began to pulse in her skull. They were faster this time, more confident, like the rhythm of tiny feet running along a corridor just out of sight. She saw Jimmy flinch at the same instant—confirmation that she wasn’t imagining it.
“I’ve been hearing that since four a.m.,” Jimmy admitted. “And sometimes… it answers back if I think too loud.”
From the back of the workshop came a metallic clatter. Breda spun round to see a toolbox slide six inches across the floor all by itself.
Jimmy picked up a spanner. “The Harmoniser’s… leaking. Not just foam. I think bits of the resonance field are seeping out. And they’re… mobile.”
As if to prove him right, the toolbox lid rattled open and one of the spanners lifted a fraction into the air before clanging back down.
“Jimmy,” Breda said slowly, “you’ve got haunted tools.”
“No,” Jimmy corrected. “Possessed tools. The haunting will come later, once they’ve had time to develop grudges.”
The squeaks in their heads doubled in volume. Somewhere in the village, a window shattered.
Breda exhaled through her teeth. “Right. You’ve got until sundown to clean this mess up. If you don’t, I’ll have the Harmoniser buried in the bog behind the GAA pitch.”
Jimmy opened his mouth to argue, but stopped. The glass drum was moving again, fog clearing just enough for them to glimpse shapes inside. Not reflections. Not shadows. Shapes that had no business being in there—loops, knots, and something that looked alarmingly like a human hand, pressing against the inside of the glass.
The smell surged. The goats outside bleated in chorus. The squeaks sharpened into something like words.
Jimmy McGroggan grinned weakly. “I think it’s trying to make friends.”
Chapter Three — The Seeping
By mid-morning, Ballykillduff was officially done pretending nothing was wrong.
The foam had gone walking.
It started small—pale blobs sliding out from under Jimmy McGroggan’s workshop door like the world’s least confident ghosts. At first, they moved slowly, sniffing their way along the cobbles, stopping now and then to pulse faintly, as if remembering something. But as the hours passed, they grew bolder.
A strand the size of a shoelace slithered into Hanrahan’s Bakery and tried to nest inside the sourdough starter. A lump the size of a football attempted to join a hopscotch game in the schoolyard. Mrs Byrne spotted one halfway up her lace curtains, examining the pattern like it was considering a home renovation project.
The smell, that custard-burnt note with its shadow of fear, had deepened. It was no longer just in the air—it was in the walls. When people leaned against a shopfront to chat, the wood or brick would exhale faintly in their ear.
By noon, Jimmy had stationed himself outside the workshop with a mop, a broom, and a bucket of what he swore was “resonance-neutralising fluid” (it looked suspiciously like tea).
Councillor Breda Kavanagh arrived to find him stabbing at a foam globule that had rolled toward the road like a polite hedgehog.
“It’s everywhere, McGroggan,” she said without greeting. “The schoolchildren are feeding it biscuits.”
“That’s good,” Jimmy replied, grimacing as the mop connected with the foam. “Biscuits slow it down.”
“Why?”
“They’re round. The foam likes straight lines.”
Breda’s eyes narrowed. “You’re making this up as you go along.”
“Yes,” Jimmy admitted, “but I’m making it up scientifically.”
A burst of squeaking hit them both at once—sharp, insistent, as if dozens of tiny wheels were spinning inside their skulls. Breda staggered, pressing a hand to her temple.
“What now?” she groaned.
Jimmy straightened, eyes darting toward the Harmoniser inside. “It’s calling them back.”
“The foam?”
“No,” Jimmy said grimly. “The hamsters.”
Breda followed his gaze. Through the grimy workshop window, she could just make out the terrarium. The hamsters—Mozart, Crunch Inspector, and Maureen—were no longer grooming or running. They were all standing perfectly still, staring in the same direction: toward the glass drum of the Harmoniser.
Something was moving inside the drum again. Not the blurry shapes from yesterday—this was clearer.
A long, pale object pressed against the glass, slowly uncoiling. It might have been a finger, except it was jointless. It dragged itself across the inside surface in a slow arc, leaving a smear that pulsed faintly before vanishing.
The foam at Jimmy’s feet began to tremble. Then, without warning, it shot toward the workshop door.
“Grab it!” Breda barked.
Jimmy lunged, slamming the mop down in its path. The foam split neatly in two, both halves darting around the obstacle like trained animals.
They vanished inside the workshop.
Jimmy swore under his breath and ran after them. Breda hesitated—her instincts told her to keep out of Jimmy McGroggan’s workshop at all costs—but followed anyway.
Inside, the air was thicker, warmer. The smell had become almost sweet, like candy floss left in the rain.
The foam halves slid across the floor, climbed the Harmoniser’s base, and disappeared into a thin crack near the drum. The hamsters didn’t move. Their tiny eyes followed the foam’s progress, and Breda could have sworn their whiskers twitched in unison, like a salute.
Jimmy stepped forward cautiously. “That’s… not ideal.”
The drum fogged over, then cleared just enough for a shape to emerge. Breda froze.
It was a face.
Not human—not exactly—but close enough to be wrong. Its proportions were off, the mouth too wide, the eyes too deep. The skin—or whatever passed for it—was pale and faintly translucent, with a soft shimmer like fish scales in moonlight.
The mouth moved. Breda didn’t hear sound with her ears, but the squeaks in her head stretched into something dangerously close to words.
“…open…”
Jimmy stumbled back. “It wants—”
“I know what it wants,” Breda snapped.
The face vanished. The foam that had gone inside the Harmoniser began to seep back out, now moving faster, pooling at their feet. It didn’t stop there—it climbed Jimmy’s boots, curling around his ankles like a cat that had been planning this for years.
Outside, someone screamed.
Jimmy wrenched free and bolted for the door, Breda close behind. They stepped into chaos.
Foam was everywhere now—creeping up lampposts, winding around bicycles, coiling across doorways. The villagers were trying to sweep it away, but every time a piece was knocked loose, it would roll a few feet and start moving again.
And then they both saw it.
In the middle of the street, one of the largest foam masses—taller than a man—was shaping itself. Slowly, impossibly, it began to stand.
A crude torso emerged, then long, jointless arms. No face, just a faint indentation where a face might go. It swayed for a moment, then turned… toward the workshop.
Breda’s voice was low and certain. “McGroggan. You’ve let something through.”
Jimmy’s throat was dry. “I think… it’s still coming.”
ChatGPT said:
Chapter Four — The McGroggan Principle
By the time the church clock chimed three, Ballykillduff had stopped functioning like a normal village.
Shops stayed open only because foam could not (yet) operate a till. School was cancelled after the larger blobs began attending lessons, perching politely on chairs until asked a question, then oozing under the door. The postman abandoned his route when a slow-moving strand wrapped itself around his bicycle tyres and began humming.
Jimmy McGroggan had barricaded himself inside the community hall with Breda Kavanagh, Father Flaherty, and a cluster of villagers too stubborn to evacuate. Outside, the foam-shape that had risen in the street earlier now stood at the end of the square, unmoving, featureless, but watching.
“This,” Breda said, pacing, “is no longer a clean-up job. This is containment. And you—” she jabbed a finger at Jimmy—“are going to tell us exactly what your hamster contraption has done to reality.”
Jimmy, perched on a stack of chairs, rubbed his face. “You want the short version?”
“I want the truth.”
He sighed. “Fine. The Harmoniser works by tapping into an emotion’s resonance signature—its ‘happiness frequency,’ if you like. That’s what the hamsters generate when they run for joy. The machine amplifies it, filters it through the brass horn, and converts it into energy. But…”
Father Flaherty’s voice was dry. “There’s always a ‘but.’”
Jimmy nodded. “But every time you amplify joy like that, you… well… tug at the threads holding everything together. Sensible things. Gravity. Time. Cause and effect. Each tug leaves a tiny tear.”
“And you’ve been tugging for years,” Breda said flatly.
Jimmy spread his hands. “I call it the McGroggan Principle: the more you improve the impossible, the more possible the impossible becomes.”
“That’s not a principle,” Breda snapped. “That’s an obituary.”
“It was only theoretical!” Jimmy protested. “The foam is—well—fallout from the tears. A kind of displaced possibility. It seeps in through the gaps, looking for structure to cling to. That’s why it likes straight lines. Buildings. Roads. Bones.”
The room went quiet.
“Bones?” Father Flaherty repeated.
Jimmy looked sheepish. “Only in theory.”
A muffled thud shook the hall. Everyone turned to the windows. The figure at the end of the square had taken a step closer.
Breda’s voice dropped. “And what about… that?”
Jimmy hesitated. “Sometimes… possibility coalesces into form. The more we look at it, the more form it gets. The more we notice it, the stronger it becomes.”
“So stop looking at it,” Breda ordered.
Easier said than done. The figure’s sheer wrongness drew the eye, like a crooked picture frame you can’t resist straightening. Each time someone glanced its way, it seemed a little more defined. Hints of shoulders, elbows, a slope to the head.
Another thud. Closer.
From the corner of the room, Mrs O’Shaughnessy’s voice wavered. “I can hear the squeaks again.”
Jimmy pressed his palms to his temples. He could hear them too—rapid, overlapping, organised. The rhythm was no longer random; it was building toward something. A pulse. A countdown.
The floor beneath them vibrated. Dust sifted down from the rafters.
Jimmy’s head snapped up. “It’s not just the foam. The stitch in the sky—it’s widening.”
Breda went to the window. Above the rooftops, the faint hairline crack from yesterday was now a visible seam, stretching twice its original length. The chartreuse colour of the sky seemed to pool around it, thickening like paint.
“What happens if it opens?” she asked.
Jimmy swallowed. “Everything that’s waiting on the other side gets to come in. And everything here… gets options.”
“Options?”
“Alternate versions. Alternate rules. Alternate… us.”
A third thud. Much closer now. Something creaked alarmingly in the wall.
Father Flaherty crossed himself. “And how do we sew up the sky, Mr McGroggan?”
Jimmy stood, straightening his lab coat as if that would give him credibility. “We have to reverse the polarity of the joy resonance before the countdown finishes. It’ll pull the foam back through the tears.”
“And the big one out there?” Breda asked.
Jimmy’s voice was quieter now. “We hope it likes the trip home.”
Another thud—so loud it rattled the hall’s windows. The foam-figure was just outside now, its blank head tilted toward the door.
From somewhere deep inside the Harmoniser’s memory, the squeaks sharpened into a single, cold thought that lodged itself in Jimmy’s brain.
“…open…”
He looked at Breda. “We don’t have much time.”
Chapter Five — The Return of the Bubble Men
The first sign was the whistling.
It began just after sundown, weaving in and out of the wind like a half-remembered lullaby. High and thin, it floated through the streets of Ballykillduff, impossible to pin down. One moment it came from the square, the next from the rooftops, and sometimes from directly behind your ear.
The second sign was the lights. Not streetlamps—those had gone out an hour before, one by one, as if politely making way—but floating orbs, each about the size of a melon, glowing with a soft white sheen. They drifted down the main street in slow procession, bobbing slightly, like deep-sea creatures who’d taken a wrong turn at the ocean floor.
Then the villagers saw the shapes inside the orbs.
At first, they looked like perfectly round, perfectly bald heads—smooth, featureless, as if carved from candle wax. But as the orbs drifted closer, faint indentations began to appear where eyes should be, and a wide, unnatural smile took shape. The faces didn’t move, but the smiles somehow grew sharper the longer you looked at them.
Breda Kavanagh had been on sentry duty at the community hall window when the first orb floated past. “McGroggan,” she said, very evenly, “why does that balloon have teeth?”
Jimmy didn’t answer immediately. He was hunched over a mess of copper coils, muttering to himself, hands working at a speed that suggested caffeine, terror, or both. When the whistling reached its next refrain, he froze.
“Oh no,” he said. “Not them.”
“Not who?” Breda demanded.
Jimmy turned slowly toward her, face pale. “The Bubble Men.”
Outside, the procession of glowing heads was growing. Each orb was perfectly still except for its slow float forward. Their mouths—too wide, too fixed—never moved, but the whistling seemed to come from all of them at once.
Father Flaherty stepped to the window and made the sign of the cross so quickly it was practically a scribble. “You’ve met these things before?”
“Not exactly met,” Jimmy said. “But I… may have accidentally opened a trans-dimensional side door to their… let’s call it a neighbourhood. It was during my… ah… Floating Potato Experiment.”
Breda didn’t take her eyes off the advancing orbs. “And what do they want?”
“They collect things,” Jimmy said grimly. “Objects, memories, people—anything they think belongs in their… museum.”
“And they’ve come here?”
Jimmy swallowed. “I think they’ve come for me.”
The leading Bubble Man orb slowed outside the hall, tilting slightly as if inspecting the building. Its faint eyes seemed to focus on Jimmy through the glass. The whistling deepened into a chord, harmonious and wrong.
The foam-figure in the square didn’t move. It simply stood there, but its blank head tilted toward the Bubble Men, as though the two entities were aware of each other.
The villagers backed away from the window as more orbs gathered outside, their soft glow casting the room in ghostly light. The smiles on their faces seemed to twitch now, just a fraction, like the first tick of a clock you didn’t realise had started.
“What do we do?” Breda asked, her voice a low hiss.
Jimmy was already rummaging through his bag of tools. “We have to distract them. The Bubble Men don’t chase— they invite. If you follow their song, you’ll step right into one of their orbs, and then—”
“And then?”
“You’ll be in the orb. Forever.”
The whistling shifted key, softer now, almost kind. It was the sound of a friend calling you in from the cold. Breda felt her feet twitch toward the door.
“Don’t listen to it,” Jimmy barked. “Plug your ears if you have to.”
More orbs were floating into view, lining the street. The villagers were trapped inside the hall, the foam-figure blocking one end of the square, the Bubble Men the other.
Somewhere, faint but distinct, came the squeaking again—inside their heads, overlapping the whistle. And for the first time, the two sounds began to merge.
Jimmy froze. “That’s not supposed to happen.”
“What’s happening?” Breda demanded.
“The foam’s talking to the Bubble Men,” Jimmy said. “And I don’t think they’re arguing.”
ChatGPT said:
Chapter Six — Operation Hamsterstorm
Jimmy McGroggan had reached the point where “mad plan” and “only plan” were now synonyms.
The Bubble Men were still floating outside, their wide, frozen grins pressed almost politely against the windows. The towering foam figure in the square hadn’t moved, but its blank head was now angled upward, watching the stitch in the sky as it widened—thread by thread—into a jagged slit. And beneath all of it, the squeaking had become so loud inside everyone’s skulls that conversation was reduced to short bursts shouted between the pulses.
Jimmy slammed a coil of copper onto the table and barked to the villagers, “I’m going to build the Trans-Dimensional Hamster Recall Cannon.”
Nobody asked what that was. Nobody wanted to give the sentence oxygen.
Breda, however, made the mistake. “And this will… help?”
“It will pull every hamster within a fifty-mile radius into one point,” Jimmy explained, his voice pitched high over the squeaks. “Then their combined joy resonance will create a feedback loop powerful enough to reverse the polarity of the foam’s incursion field.”
Father Flaherty glared. “That sounds dangerously close to blasphemy.”
“It’s engineering,” Jimmy insisted. “With fur.”
He yanked a battered pet carrier from beneath the table. Inside were the Harmoniser’s original power team—Mozart, Crunch Inspector, and Maureen—each looking surprisingly alert for animals in the middle of a cosmic crisis. Their whiskers twitched in perfect unison, following some silent beat only they could hear.
Jimmy began wiring together parts salvaged from the hall’s emergency lighting, a popcorn maker, and what looked suspiciously like the brass horn from the Harmoniser. As he worked, the squeaks in his head changed tempo—faster now, urgent.
“They know what I’m doing,” he muttered. “They want in.”
“What do you mean, want in?” Breda asked.
Jimmy didn’t answer. Instead, he clamped the brass horn to a tripod, attached the copper coil, and loaded the pet carrier directly beneath it. The hamsters stood on their hind legs, eyes glinting.
“On my mark,” Jimmy said, “I’m going to fire the recall pulse. Any hamster in range will materialise right here, in this room. So be ready.”
“What does be ready mean?” Breda demanded.
Jimmy glanced up. “It means don’t open your mouth too wide.”
He threw the switch.
The horn gave a low, rolling whumf—like a foghorn heard from inside a dream. The coil lit up with a blinding flash.
Then they came.
Hamsters popped into existence like popcorn, one after another, landing in squeaking heaps on the floor, on the tables, in the laps of startled villagers. Within seconds, the hall was alive with hundreds—no, thousands—of tiny furballs, their collective squeaking forming a single, massive sound that vibrated in the chest.
And it didn’t stop there. More kept arriving—falling from the rafters, tumbling through the open loft hatch, sliding under the door in impossible streams. The floor became a shifting, living carpet.
Breda clutched the back of a chair. “Jimmy… this is too many.”
“They’ll harmonise,” Jimmy shouted over the din. “Then we’ll fire the loop and—”
He stopped.
Because every single hamster had turned to face the same direction: toward the windows.
Outside, the Bubble Men’s smiles were wider now. The whistling had merged completely with the squeaking, forming a single, hypnotic tone. The orbs began to press closer to the glass.
The foam-figure took one enormous step forward.
Jimmy’s stomach sank. “Oh no. They’re not harmonising with me. They’re harmonising with them.”
At that moment, the hamsters moved—together, in a single rush—toward the door. The pet carrier tipped over. The horn’s coil sparked.
And the stitch in the sky tore open just a little wider.
Chapter Seven — The Great Ballykillduff Displacement
The first building vanished at dawn.
It was Mrs Byrne’s sewing shop—a narrow, leaning structure between Hanrahan’s Bakery and the post office. One moment it was there, smelling faintly of lavender and dust; the next, it was gone. Not collapsed. Not stolen. Just absent. In its place was a neatly paved square of cobblestones, still damp from the morning mist, as if the shop had never existed at all.
Five minutes later, the sewing shop reappeared half a mile away—in the middle of the GAA pitch—perfectly intact, with Mrs Byrne inside, still knitting, and deeply irritated to find herself surrounded by goalposts.
By mid-morning, the rest of the village began to shift.
Buildings slid along the streets like chess pieces. The post office traded places with O’Malley’s pub. The school rotated ninety degrees so its front door faced a wall. Father Flaherty’s church ended up on top of the hill outside town, leaning at an angle that made the bell ring with every gust of wind.
And it wasn’t just the buildings. Entire rooms within them were swapping around like mismatched puzzle pieces. Breda Kavanagh woke up in her kitchen instead of her bedroom, with her bed wedged between the sink and the fridge. Mr Hanrahan opened the door to his pantry and stepped into Mrs O’Shaughnessy’s sitting room.
Jimmy McGroggan, however, was not surprised.
“This,” he announced to the increasingly panicked villagers gathered in the square, “is exactly what happens when the Fabric of Sensible Reality™ gets over-stitched. The tears are trying to re-weave themselves—but they don’t remember where everything belongs.”
Breda glared at him. “You’re saying this is repairs?”
“Yes!” Jimmy beamed, as though it were good news. “Unfortunately, the repairs are… improvisational.”
The squeaking in everyone’s heads had changed again—no longer urgent, but steady and methodical, like something taking notes. Overhead, the stitch in the sky was now a visible tear, edges fraying into long, thread-like tendrils that swayed in the chartreuse light.
The Bubble Men were still present, their glowing orbs hovering at the edges of the square. They didn’t move closer, but their wide smiles seemed to widen whenever a building jumped position, as though they were cataloguing the changes for their collection.
The foam-figure, meanwhile, had split into three. One remained in the square, motionless. The other two had taken up positions at opposite ends of the village, just standing there, heads tilted, blank faces turned toward the tear in the sky.
Jimmy studied the scene, hands clasped behind his back. “We’re witnessing a complete spatial reallocation. The whole village is shuffling itself like a deck of cards.”
Father Flaherty’s voice was dry. “And when the shuffle’s done?”
Jimmy hesitated. “Then we’ll see whose game we’re playing.”
The ground trembled. A loud clunk echoed through the air as the old mill—unused for decades—slid forward twenty feet and locked into place against the town hall, as if it had always been part of it. The seam between their walls shimmered faintly before settling.
From somewhere behind them came Mrs O’Shaughnessy’s voice, shrill with alarm. “My kitchen table just swapped with the duck pond!”
Jimmy nodded gravely. “Yes, furniture transpositions are a sign we’re in the mid-stage displacement. By late stage, we could see… people swaps.”
The villagers went very quiet.
Overhead, the tear in the sky widened just a fraction more. The tendrils curling from its edges drifted downward, as if testing the air, reaching toward the rooftops.
The squeaking inside their skulls grew louder—joined now by a faint, echoing whistle.
Jimmy’s eyes narrowed. “They’re working together. The foam and the Bubble Men. And they’re rearranging Ballykillduff into… something else.”
Breda folded her arms. “And what exactly is that something?”
Jimmy looked up at the tear. “If I’m right… we’re building them a doorway.”
ChatGPT said:
Chapter Eight — The Thing in the Grain Silo
For most of its life, Ballykillduff’s grain silo had been exactly what it claimed to be: a tall, grey cylinder for storing wheat and the occasional misguided crow. It had stood at the edge of the village for forty years without incident, save for the time Seamus Doran tried to use it as a rocket testing site and was banned from the GAA pitch for a month.
Now, the silo was breathing.
It wasn’t loud breathing—more of a slow, deliberate inhale-exhale, like the whole structure was taking careful note of the weather. The metal walls flexed in and out with each breath, producing a faint, metallic sigh that carried all the way to the square.
Jimmy McGroggan stood at the base, staring up. He’d been here for an hour, scribbling notes, muttering to himself, and occasionally prodding the wall with a stick to see if it noticed.
Breda Kavanagh arrived with her arms folded, which was her default setting whenever Jimmy was involved. “All right,” she said. “Tell me why the silo is… doing that.”
Jimmy tapped his notebook. “I dismantled one of my earlier prototypes last night—the Resonance Pre-Amplifier. I left some parts here for safe keeping. Now it appears the foam found them and… reassembled something.”
Breda stared. “Inside the silo?”
“Yes. And I think it’s—” Jimmy hesitated, as though saying it out loud might encourage the thing—“the Prototype Before the Prototype.”
“Why’s it called that?”
“Because it’s the version I abandoned before I even built the first prototype. Too unstable.”
A deep, resonant thunk echoed from inside the silo, followed by a sound like grain running uphill. The breathing quickened.
“What does it do?” Breda asked.
Jimmy’s expression flickered between pride and dread. “It was supposed to bend physics in a localised area to improve crop yields. Make grain grow faster by altering the rate of time inside the silo.”
“And now?”
He scratched his head. “Well, now it’s… rewriting physics entirely. From the inside out.”
A dent appeared in the silo wall, pushing outward as if something large was leaning against it from within. Then another dent, higher up. The metal creaked.
From the tear in the sky above, several of those threadlike tendrils had drifted down toward the silo, curling lazily in the chartreuse light. When the tips brushed the metal, sparks of pale green leapt between them.
Jimmy stepped back. “That’s bad.”
“Define bad,” Breda said.
“That’s ‘physics is now a polite suggestion’ bad.”
The villagers began to gather at a safe distance. Father Flaherty held up his crucifix, though whether for protection or comfort was unclear. The Bubble Men hovered nearby, their smiles twitching in a way that looked almost… expectant. The foam-figures had shifted position again, forming a loose triangle around the silo.
The breathing stopped.
For a moment, all was silent except for the faint hiss of the tendrils against the metal. Then, with a groan like an old door opening into a nightmare, a section of the silo wall peeled outward—not tearing, but unfolding, the way petals open in slow motion.
Something moved inside.
It wasn’t foam. It wasn’t hamster. It wasn’t anything that should have fit in the silo. It was all sharp edges and wrong angles, a shape that made your eyes want to look somewhere else. The air around it shimmered like heat on tarmac, except it was cold—bone-cold—and carried the smell of burnt sugar and old grain.
The thing stepped forward, and for the first time in hours, the squeaking in everyone’s heads went silent.
Jimmy’s voice was barely a whisper. “It’s noticed us.”
The thing tilted what might have been a head, as if testing the concept of angles. Then it took another step, and the ground between it and the villagers… creased. Not cracked—creased, like paper folding along a line that hadn’t been there a moment before.
Breda’s hand went to the whistle on her belt. “If that’s from your prototype, McGroggan, you’d better tell me how to kill it.”
Jimmy didn’t blink. “That’s the problem, Councillor. I don’t think it was built to die.”
And above them, the tear in the sky shivered—wider now—spilling a faint, steady drizzle of light onto the top of the silo, as though encouraging whatever was inside to finish stepping out.
ChatGPT said:
Chapter Nine — The Scent Thickens
By the next morning, Ballykillduff smelled like a bakery that had been locked for a hundred years and then set gently on fire.
The burnt-custard scent was so strong it clung to the back of the throat, leaving a sticky sweetness that made people feel oddly nostalgic for things they had never experienced—like summer afternoons in gardens they’d never visited, or childhood pets they’d never owned.
It was coming from everywhere.
The foam left pale streaks of it as it slid along walls and doors. The Bubble Men seemed to exhale it, their glassy orbs glowing slightly brighter with every whistling note. Even the angular creature from the silo trailed a faint ribbon of the smell in its wake, as though marked by the village itself.
And the scent did more than linger—it changed people.
At Hanrahan’s Bakery, Mr Hanrahan stopped mid-roll of pastry, blinked, and announced that he was a walrus. Not metaphorically. Not joking. Just a walrus, temporarily trapped in human form. At the pub, half the patrons began reminiscing about events that hadn’t happened yet, such as the “great cheese storm” of 2027 and the time the GAA pitch was replaced by a glass lake full of singing trout.
Children in the schoolyard were overheard arguing about whether they were currently in Ballykillduff at all, or if they’d all been swapped with children in “the other Ballykillduff” last night while they slept.
Jimmy McGroggan was not immune. He’d been pacing the community hall, sketching diagrams of impossible machines, when he suddenly remembered—with absolute certainty—building a version of the Harmoniser that was shaped like a giant teacup. The memory was so vivid he could smell the tea steam.
“None of this happened,” Breda told him, clutching her nose against the scent.
“It happened somewhere,” Jimmy replied, eyes bright. “The smell is rethreading our memories—replacing them with events from other… configurations.”
“Configurations?”
“Versions of Ballykillduff. Versions of us.”
Through the window, the tear in the sky was visibly wider, a frayed slit spilling chartreuse light onto the rooftops. The tendrils from its edges now brushed buildings, leaving faint glowing marks on the stone. Wherever they touched, the burnt-custard scent intensified.
The Bubble Men hovered close, their smiles twitching in strange synchrony. Every so often, one of the orbs would drift upward toward a tendril, touch it, and flicker—as though syncing itself to the tear.
The foam-figures had multiplied again. There were now six, each stationed at a different point in the village, all facing inward, as if guarding a central space. The angular creature from the silo stood in that space, perfectly still, its jagged silhouette outlined by the drifting tendrils above.
Father Flaherty entered the hall with a grim expression. “It’s in the church now. The smell. It made Mrs O’Shaughnessy tell me she once married a cloud.”
Jimmy looked up sharply. “That’s it. That’s the next stage.”
Breda pinched the bridge of her nose. “Next stage of what?”
“The Scent Spiral,” Jimmy said. “First, it disorients. Then it rewrites memories. Finally, it uses those rewritten memories as anchors. That’s how they pull the new reality through.”
“They?” Breda asked.
Jimmy didn’t answer. He just glanced out at the Bubble Men, their smiles fixed, their glassy heads bobbing in rhythm with the squeaks in his skull.
The smell grew stronger.
And somewhere deep in Jimmy’s bones, he felt the shift—like a thread being tugged through the weave of the world, unpicking and resewing in the same motion.
ChatGPT said:
Chapter Ten — The Festival of Impossible Things
It began without permission.
At dawn, the main street was empty. By noon, it was full—so full that no one could agree who had built the stalls, who had hung the bunting, or why the bunting was made from fabrics that shimmered like beetle wings. The air smelled faintly of burnt custard (still) but was laced now with something else: aniseed, ozone, and the crackle of static.
Villagers wandered out of their rearranged houses to find the Festival of Impossible Things in full swing.
There were no familiar vendors. Instead, strangers manned the stalls—some almost human, others decidedly not. One sold jars of wind labelled by year: Ballykillduff Breeze, Summer 1932, Storm off Inishmore, 2045 (Preview Batch). Another offered boiled sweets that changed flavour depending on which direction you faced when you unwrapped them.
In the middle of the square, a carousel spun slowly. The horses were replaced by giant silverfish, their polished scales glinting under the chartreuse sky. The music was an eerie, perfect harmony of squeaks and whistles. Jimmy McGroggan refused to go near it.
Breda Kavanagh stood beside him, scanning the crowd. “This isn’t our festival.”
Jimmy didn’t look away from a nearby stall where a creature with far too many elbows was selling kites shaped like Möbius strips. “No. It’s theirs.”
And indeed, they were everywhere.
The Bubble Men drifted lazily between stalls, their smiles wider than ever. Foam-figures moved with slow, deliberate grace, occasionally stopping to touch an object—a doorframe, a tin of biscuits, a child’s cheek—before moving on. The angular creature from the silo stood at the centre of the square, its jagged form motionless, tendrils of chartreuse light curling gently down around it from the widening tear in the sky.
Visitors had come too—beings who looked like echoes of the villagers but dressed in fashions that were almost right, almost now. One was a double of Mrs O’Shaughnessy, except taller and with skin faintly transparent. Another was Father Flaherty’s mirror image, except the reflection blinked out of sync. They walked among the real villagers, chatting amiably, swapping stories about events that had not yet occurred.
At one stall, Jimmy watched a child—Barmy Bernard—hand over a marble and receive a small cube in return. The cube unfolded into a staircase that led straight up into nothing. Bernard grinned and began climbing.
Breda swore under her breath. “This is a trap.”
Jimmy shook his head. “It’s a celebration.”
“They’re the same thing,” Breda said.
On cue, the music changed. The carousel slowed to a stop, and the squeak-whistle harmony deepened into a single, resonant note. All movement in the square slowed. The visitors, the doubles, the Bubble Men—all turned to face the angular creature in the centre.
From the tear above, more tendrils lowered, weaving together into an arch of pale green light. The smell of burnt custard surged, heavy and intoxicating.
Jimmy swallowed hard. “It’s the gateway. The festival was just… the prelude.”
Breda’s voice was tight. “And what happens when they open it?”
Jimmy didn’t answer. The angular creature raised one long, jagged arm toward the arch, and the square was filled with a sound that was neither squeak nor whistle, but something vast and final.
ChatGPT said:
Chapter Eleven — The Final Experiment
By the morning after the Festival, Ballykillduff was a village half in this world and half in another.
The streets no longer followed their old routes—lanes looped into themselves, doorways opened into fields miles away, and the river now flowed uphill in lazy spirals. Above it all, the tear in the sky had stopped pretending to be subtle. It was wide enough now to see shapes moving inside: pale silhouettes drifting in chartreuse haze, as if waiting for someone to wave them through.
Jimmy McGroggan hadn’t slept. He stood in the centre of the repurposed community hall, surrounded by coils of copper wire, jars of cold coffee, and the gutted remains of several kitchen appliances. In the middle of this chaos sat his last hope: the Reality Re-Knitter.
It looked like a cross between a loom, a church organ, and a vat of cabbage soup. From the top, a series of thin metal arms reached upward, each tipped with a tiny brass bell. The bells were connected by strings of copper that crisscrossed like spiderwebs. In the middle, the vat of cabbage bubbled faintly, infused with enough coffee to make the steam smell like a late-night diner in trouble.
Breda Kavanagh stood at the doorway, arms folded. “If you tell me this is going to ‘stabilise the jollity field,’ I will throw you into the river myself.”
Jimmy shook his head. “No. This will stitch the Fabric of Sensible Reality™ back together. If it works.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then Ballykillduff becomes… the crossroads. Everything from everywhere comes through. And none of us get to leave.”
The Bubble Men were already gathered outside, their glowing heads drifting in slow circles around the hall. The foam-figures stood motionless at the cardinal points, their blank heads all turned toward the Re-Knitter. And somewhere just beyond sight, the angular creature from the silo moved like a shadow with edges.
Breda stepped closer to the machine. “How does it work?”
Jimmy straightened, a mad glint in his eyes. “We ring the bells in a sequence that matches the original harmonic pattern of this reality. The copper web channels the resonance, the coffee cabbage provides the necessary… earthiness, and the bells pull the torn threads back into place.”
“Earthiness,” Breda repeated flatly.
Jimmy ignored her and began winding the crank. The cabbage vat gurgled ominously. The bells began to tremble, producing a faint, overlapping chime.
Outside, the Bubble Men stopped moving. The foam-figures tilted their heads in unison. The tear in the sky shimmered.
The first real note rang out—clear, high, and strange enough to make the hairs on everyone’s arms stand up. The buildings around the square wavered, their edges sharpening, then blurring again.
Jimmy adjusted the sequence. Another note, lower this time, vibrated through the cobblestones. From the tear above, one of the tendrils snapped back like a rope, disappearing into the chartreuse haze.
Breda’s eyes widened. “It’s working.”
Jimmy grinned. “Of course it’s—”
A new sound joined the bells: the whistle-squeak harmony of the Bubble Men and the foam, merging into a dissonant chord. The glow from the orbs intensified, and the foam-figures began to advance toward the hall.
“They’re fighting it,” Jimmy said. “They don’t want the seam closed.”
The angular creature stepped into the square, its jagged form haloed by the green light. Every step made the bells waver.
Breda reached for the crank. “Then we finish this before they get here.”
The two of them turned it together. The bells rang faster, the copper web hummed, and the cabbage vat began to boil over, splashing the floor with steaming, bitter liquid.
Above them, the tear flickered—closing, opening, closing—like an indecisive eye. The silhouettes within moved faster now, pressing closer to the edge.
Jimmy shouted over the rising noise, “One more sequence—then either we win, or Ballykillduff is gone.”
And with the last turn of the crank, the bells sang a note so pure it cut through the whistle-squeak entirely. The foam-figures froze. The Bubble Men dimmed. The tear in the sky quivered—
—then everything went white.
Chapter Twelve — The Hamster’s Revenge
When the white light faded, Ballykillduff was… wrong.
Not destroyed, not gone—just rearranged in ways that made your eyes want to close of their own accord. The buildings were back where they belonged, but their shadows didn’t match. The tear in the sky had shrunk to a fine seam again, but it pulsed faintly, like a sleeping heartbeat. The Bubble Men had vanished, the foam-figures dissolved into drifting mist, and the angular creature… nowhere to be seen.
For a moment, the villagers allowed themselves to breathe.
Then the squeaking started.
At first, it was faint—like a few hamsters rustling in cedar shavings. Then it grew, louder and louder, until it was a rolling thunder of tiny feet and twitching whiskers. The ground began to tremble.
Breda turned to Jimmy. “You didn’t invite them, did you?”
Jimmy looked pale. “Not exactly. When I rang the final sequence… I may have opened a—”
They appeared all at once. Hundreds—no, thousands—of hamsters poured into the square from every alley, rooftop, and drain. They came in colours nature had never intended: chartreuse, shimmering silver, translucent. Some glowed faintly, others flickered in and out of sight. All of them moved with perfect, military precision, forming tight ranks in front of the community hall.
At their head stood Maureen, forewoman of the original hamster team. She was larger now, almost the size of a small dog, her fur glowing faintly in the dim light. Mozart and Crunch Inspector flanked her, each wearing an expression that could only be described as administrative disapproval.
Jimmy stepped forward, trying for his usual cheer. “Ah, Maureen! You’re looking well—”
Maureen squeaked once. The sound was sharp, commanding. Every hamster in the square sat up at attention.
The squeaking that followed wasn’t random—it was speech. Not in human language, but in a rhythm and pitch that somehow carried meaning directly into the mind. Everyone in the square understood it, and every understanding was the same:
You opened the way. We liked it. We want it back.
Breda’s jaw clenched. “Jimmy… are we negotiating with hamsters?”
Jimmy didn’t take his eyes off Maureen. “We might be surrendering to them.”
Maureen squeaked again. This time, the message was colder.
Help us reopen it, or we take Ballykillduff for ourselves.
From the edges of the square, more hamsters began to arrive—climbing over walls, dropping from rooftops, emerging from chimneys in tiny puffs of soot. Their sheer number was suffocating.
Father Flaherty made the sign of the cross. “Lord preserve us. The rodents have staged a coup.”
The seam in the sky pulsed again, faintly, as though aware of the demand being made beneath it. The air was thick with the smell of burnt custard and cedar wood.
Jimmy swallowed hard. “If we say no?”
Maureen’s whiskers twitched. Then we build our own way through. And we start by… changing things.
Even as she squeaked it, the nearest lamppost began to warp, curling into a spiral. The cobblestones rippled like water. Somewhere behind them, the church bell tolled thirteen.
Breda took a step closer to Jimmy and spoke under her breath. “You’re the one who brought them here. You’re the one who gets us out of this.”
Jimmy didn’t answer. His eyes were on Maureen, who had raised herself up on her hind legs like a general before a charge.
The hamsters squeaked in unison, a sound so loud it made the seam in the sky twitch.
And somewhere far above, in that green-lit haze beyond the seam, something… squeaked back.
Chapter Thirteen — Hamsterworld Rising
It began with the lampposts.
Every one in Ballykillduff bent into a curve overnight, their tops meeting in pairs like the necks of strange birds. From each junction dangled a glowing ball—not a bulb, but a sphere of chartreuse light, humming softly in perfect synchrony with the seam in the sky.
The hamsters had moved in fast. By morning, they had commandeered the GAA pitch, converting it into a vast network of ramps, tunnels, and spinning wheels that turned without anyone inside. The pub had been rebranded The Chew Bar. The post office now dispensed nothing but sunflower seeds.
Breda Kavanagh and Jimmy McGroggan stood on the steps of the community hall, staring out at the transformation. Villagers wandered the streets in a daze, unsure whether to be afraid or impressed.
“This isn’t an occupation,” Breda muttered. “It’s… urban redevelopment.”
Jimmy grimaced. “Hamster-style.”
Maureen, still glowing faintly from her place atop a converted bread cart, presided over the scene with the calm authority of a monarch who knew she couldn’t be removed. Mozart and Crunch Inspector flanked her, each wearing harnesses fitted with what looked suspiciously like stolen parts from Jimmy’s old prototypes.
The seam in the sky had grown wider again—only by inches, but enough to let through faint glimmers of movement from the other side. Sometimes the shapes looked like more hamsters. Sometimes they looked like… something else.
At midday, Maureen called a meeting. She sat on a small dais in the square, the villagers gathered reluctantly in front of her. The squeaking began, and once again the meaning pressed itself into every mind.
We are building the way. It will be ready soon. You will live as guests.
“Guests?” Breda said aloud.
Jimmy kept his voice low. “That’s… their polite word for livestock.”
The hamsters’ construction efforts accelerated. Using tools they should not have been able to hold, they built tall spindles at each corner of the village, each capped with a spinning wheel that glowed in time with the seam. The sound of tiny feet was constant, echoing through every alley.
And then the weather changed.
Dark clouds rolled in, but not normal clouds—these were striped, spiralling patterns of green and silver. Rain fell in tiny pellets that looked like seeds, bouncing and scattering across the cobblestones. Wherever they landed, tiny shoots sprang up immediately, growing into tall, curling plants with leaves shaped like hamster paws.
Father Flaherty crossed himself. “It’s the end times. And it’s fuzzy.”
That night, Jimmy lay awake in the hall, scribbling frantically in his notebook. “They’re not just opening a way back to where they came from,” he told Breda. “They’re building a two-way channel. Whatever’s on the other side… it’s coming here.”
“What’s on the other side?” she asked.
Jimmy stopped writing. “Imagine Ballykillduff. But all the people are hamsters. And all the hamsters are… something else entirely.”
Breda stared at him. “Something worse?”
“Yes,” Jimmy said quietly. “Much worse.”
The next morning, the seam pulsed so brightly it lit the entire village like dawn. From its edges, dozens of fine, threadlike tendrils began to lower—much faster than before—reaching for the tops of the new hamster-built spindles.
The first tendril touched. The spindle’s wheel spun faster. The air filled with a deep, resonant squeak.
Maureen turned to face the seam, whiskers trembling in anticipation.
And somewhere far beyond the green haze, something answered.
Chapter Fourteen — Through the Seam
By dawn, the spindles were complete.
By noon, the seam in the sky was wide enough for the villagers to see what lay beyond.
By sunset, the hamsters had begun the crossing.
The light from the seam spilled down in chartreuse columns, each beam wrapping itself around a spindle. The wheels spun so fast they became transparent, and a low, thrumming vibration rolled through Ballykillduff like the purr of a giant cat.
Jimmy McGroggan, notebook clutched in one hand, stared up at the opening. “We’ve lost control. We’ve completely lost control.”
“You ever had control?” Breda Kavanagh said dryly, but her voice was tight.
The seam wasn’t just a window now—it was a bridge. Shapes moved across it: hamster forms in strange armour, carrying devices that buzzed and hummed. They marched in formation, pausing only to sniff the air before continuing into the square.
And then came the others.
The “something else entirely” Jimmy had warned about.
At first glance, they resembled people—tall, slender, but with faces that never stayed fixed. One moment human, the next angular and impossible, like sketches redrawn too quickly. Their limbs bent too many ways. They moved in fluid bursts, as if reality couldn’t quite decide how to hold them.
The villagers shrank back, pressing against walls, whispering prayers.
Maureen, from her bread-cart throne, squeaked a command. The hamster ranks parted, and one of the taller creatures stepped forward. Its form shifted three times before settling on something vaguely human, though its mouth was too wide and its eyes reflected the chartreuse light like mirrors.
The creature spoke. The words were in no known language, but everyone understood.
This place will do.
The hamsters squeaked in chorus, the sound blending with the hum of the spindles until it was impossible to tell which was which.
Jimmy leaned toward Breda. “This isn’t an invasion.”
“Could have fooled me,” she hissed.
“It’s a merger.”
The spindles shone brighter. The air thickened, the smell of burnt custard and cedar wood now so strong it made eyes water. The buildings flickered—not vanishing, but shifting, as if alternate versions of them were bleeding through.
Father Flaherty stumbled forward, crucifix raised. “In the name of—”
The tall creature raised a single, shifting hand. The crucifix bent in half like soft wire.
Jimmy took a step back. “We need to break the link. The spindles are the anchor points—destroy them, and maybe the seam will collapse.”
Breda’s jaw tightened. “Maybe?”
“Or maybe it rips everything open at once.”
Above them, more shapes moved toward the seam, eager to cross. The chartreuse glow was now so bright it painted the village in unnatural colour.
Maureen squeaked again, a single, sharp order. Every hamster in the square turned to face the villagers.
Jimmy took a deep breath. “We’re out of time.”
And as the first of the tall, shifting creatures stepped fully into Ballykillduff, the seam behind it flared—showing, for just an instant, a world entirely made of light, motion, and teeth.
Chapter Fifteen — The Last Spindle
The first spindle fell at twilight.
Breda Kavanagh had taken a sledgehammer from the old hardware shed and swung it with the kind of fury only someone defending their hometown from interdimensional hamster invaders could muster. The copper wheel shattered, spilling sparks and a gush of chartreuse light that hissed as it hit the cobblestones.
The seam in the sky reacted instantly—it flickered, shuddered, and one of the tall shifting creatures halfway across froze mid-step, its form glitching into a smear of impossible geometry before snapping back.
Maureen’s squeak was so loud it cracked two windows in Hanrahan’s Bakery. The hamster army scrambled, their precision ranks breaking into chaotic swarms as they rushed toward the fallen spindle.
Jimmy McGroggan was already running to the second one. “Three more!” he yelled. “If we break them all, we collapse the bridge!”
The villagers—finally realising this might be winnable—joined in. Father Flaherty swung an iron gate post like a spear. Mr Hanrahan hurled loaves of bread with the force of a shot-put champion. Even Mrs O’Shaughnessy waded into the fray, wielding her handbag like a meteor.
The tall creatures did not attack outright; they shifted—appearing suddenly in front of attackers, staring with mirror-bright eyes, their too-wide mouths twitching in ways that made stomachs churn. The hesitation they caused was enough for hamsters to swarm in and knock people back.
Breda and Jimmy reached the second spindle together. The chartreuse beam running through it pulsed as if aware of what was coming. Jimmy swung a length of rebar. The copper spun faster, resisting, but with a second blow from Breda’s sledgehammer, it snapped clean in two.
The seam flickered again—narrowing slightly. Two of the tall creatures turned their heads toward the damage in unison, their forms rippling with agitation.
Maureen herself abandoned her bread-cart throne, darting toward the third spindle, squeaking orders that rolled through the hamster ranks like an electric current. The army began to pile onto the base, forming a living barricade.
Jimmy cursed. “We’ll never break that one without—”
The sky split with a new sound. It wasn’t a squeak or a whistle—it was a bellow, deep and furious. Every hamster froze. Even the tall creatures paused, heads tilting toward the horizon.
From beyond the hill came a blur of movement, then an explosion of dust and fur. A single, enormous hamster—easily the size of a tractor—charged into the square, scattering the smaller ones like marbles. On its back rode a familiar figure: the Crunch Inspector, eyes wild, squeaking a battle cry.
“Is that—?” Breda began.
“Yes,” Jimmy said, grinning for the first time in hours. “It’s a mutiny.”
The giant hamster ploughed straight into the barricade, smashing the third spindle’s base to splinters. The copper wheel clanged to the cobblestones and rolled away. The seam contracted further, pulling back from the nearest spindle like a snail withdrawing into its shell.
“One more!” Jimmy shouted.
But the fourth spindle stood directly beneath the seam’s widest point. The tall creatures were gathered around it now, their forms flickering so rapidly it hurt to look at them. Above, the tear seethed, light spilling like molten glass.
Breda tightened her grip on the sledgehammer. “We either end this now…”
“…or we don’t end it at all,” Jimmy finished.
They ran.
Chapter Sixteen — Collapse
The fourth spindle loomed ahead, its copper wheel spinning so fast it blurred into a disk of green light. The tall shifting creatures circled it, their shapes glitching between human silhouettes, insectoid torsos, and impossible angular patterns. Every flicker of their forms made the air ripple, as if reality itself were unsteady around them.
Jimmy McGroggan skidded to a halt just outside the circle. “We can’t just smash through—they’ll blink right in front of us every time.”
Breda Kavanagh’s eyes narrowed. “Then we make them blink where we want them.”
She hurled her sledgehammer—not at the spindle, but at one of the glowing lamppost orbs above. The sphere exploded in a burst of chartreuse sparks, showering the creatures below. They flickered violently, their synchrony breaking as they reeled from the light.
Jimmy didn’t wait. He charged forward, rebar in hand, slamming into the base of the spindle. The impact rang out like a bell, sending a deep, resonant note through the cobblestones. The tall creatures recoiled, their forms stretching thin before snapping back.
Maureen shrieked—a squeak so sharp it was almost a scream—and the hamster army surged toward the spindle in a desperate rush. But the giant rebel hamster was faster. It bounded into their path, scattering them again while the Crunch Inspector barked orders in rapid, defiant squeaks.
Breda reached Jimmy’s side. “Hit it together!”
On three, they swung—her sledgehammer from the left, his rebar from the right. The copper wheel groaned, cracked, and then tore free from its housing.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the seam in the sky lurched.
It shrank in a single violent spasm, pulling the chartreuse beams back like snapped cables. The tall creatures screamed—not in sound, but in a psychic blast that made teeth ache and stomachs twist. One by one, they were sucked backward into the narrowing tear, their forms smearing like wet paint.
The hamsters tried to follow, but the seam contracted too fast. Maureen leapt for it, glowing fur outstretched, and vanished into the light just before it slammed shut with a sound like a giant book snapping closed.
Silence fell.
The spindles were nothing but splintered wood and twisted copper. The lampposts hung limp. The unnatural light faded, leaving only the deep blue of a normal Ballykillduff night.
Breda’s breathing slowed. “Is it… over?”
Jimmy stared at the spot where the seam had been. “For now. But seams don’t vanish. They just… wait to be pulled open again.”
Around them, the villagers began to emerge from doorways, their faces pale but alive. The giant hamster stood at the edge of the square, breathing heavily, before turning and bounding into the night without a sound. The Crunch Inspector gave one last approving squeak before following.
Only a faint whiff of burnt custard lingered.
Breda hefted the broken sledgehammer onto her shoulder. “Let’s agree on something, Jimmy.”
“What?”
“No more machines that could possibly open holes to hamster dimensions.”
Jimmy hesitated. “…What about gerbils?”
She glared at him.
“…Right. No gerbils either.”
Chapter Seventeen — The Whisker in the Wind
Three nights after the seam closed, Ballykillduff should have been back to normal.
It wasn’t.
The buildings had stopped flickering, the streets were back in place, and the lampposts no longer hummed—but the air carried a strange static, as if the village were waiting for something.
Jimmy McGroggan noticed it first while taking apart the remains of the Reality Re-Knitter in the community hall. He’d just prised loose the final copper strand when he felt it—a tickle across his cheek, too deliberate to be a draught. He turned. Nothing. But the tickle came again, this time along his jawline, followed by the faintest… brush.
A whisker.
Breda Kavanagh burst through the door before he could say anything, holding something in her hand. “Found this stuck in my windowsill.”
It was another whisker—chartreuse at the root, fading to pure white at the tip.
Jimmy’s stomach tightened. “She’s been here.”
Breda didn’t need to ask who. Maureen.
That night, the whispers began. Not human voices—more like the sound of tiny feet pattering over wood, magnified until it was a low, constant susurration. It came from everywhere and nowhere: under floors, in attic beams, behind cupboard doors.
By the second night, the whispers became words—not spoken aloud, but dropped directly into the mind.
We’re still here.
Jimmy and Breda met in the pub to compare notes. The Chew Bar sign had been taken down, but the faint outline of hamster teeth still showed through the paint.
“It’s not an invasion anymore,” Breda said. “It’s an infestation.”
Jimmy shook his head. “It’s a reconnaissance. They’re checking if the seam can be pulled open again from this side.”
And then, as if to prove his point, the ground beneath the pub gave a small, deliberate thud. Every glass rattled.
Father Flaherty, sitting two stools over, crossed himself. “That wasn’t the wind.”
The thud came again, and this time the floorboards bowed upward for a second before settling. The whispers grew louder, until they were impossible to ignore.
We are under your feet.
Without warning, the floor at the centre of the pub exploded upward in a spray of splinters. A single hamster—tiny, grey, and glowing faintly—landed on the counter. It stood on its hind legs, eyes fixed on Jimmy.
And then it spoke—not in squeaks, but in perfect, accented English.
“Maureen says hello.”
The pub went silent. Even the wind outside stopped.
The hamster leaned closer to Jimmy. “And she says she’s found… something bigger.”
Chapter Eighteen — Something Bigger
It started with the drains.
The villagers of Ballykillduff woke to find every gutter, grate, and stormwater pipe humming faintly—not with water, but with a sound like the purring of a hundred cats in perfect unison. The vibrations travelled up through the walls of houses, rattling crockery and making teeth itch.
By mid-morning, the sound grew deeper, more deliberate. Jimmy McGroggan, wrench in hand, pried open the drain outside the post office and peered in.
The glow hit him first—chartreuse, of course, but shot through with streaks of dark crimson. The colour pulsed, and with each pulse came a sensation in the bones: not a sound, but a message.
It’s awake.
Breda Kavanagh was already jogging up the street, a coil of rope over her shoulder. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me they haven’t nested.”
Jimmy’s face was grim. “Not nested. Dug through. And whatever’s on the other side… it’s forcing its way up.”
That night, the first tremor hit. It was small—barely enough to knock a bottle off a shelf—but it came from deep below, as if something far larger than the village itself was shifting.
The glowing hamster from the pub appeared again, scurrying to the centre of the square before standing upright. Its eyes burned like tiny twin suns.
“Maureen says you have one night,” it announced. “Then she brings it through.”
“Brings what?” Breda demanded.
The hamster’s gaze didn’t waver. “The Burrower.”
The word landed like a stone dropped into a still pond—ripples of dread spreading through everyone who heard it.
Father Flaherty muttered a prayer. “That doesn’t sound like a blessing.”
The ground shook again, harder this time. From beneath the square came a sound like tearing cloth, but deeper—like the earth itself was being unstitched.
Jimmy crouched, pressing a hand to the cobblestones. They were warm. “It’s not coming through the seam in the sky this time. It’s making its own way in.”
A crack split the centre of the square. Chartreuse light poured out, mixed with that strange crimson. The smell was worse than burnt custard now—metallic, sharp, and faintly sweet, like rotting fruit.
From below came a sound that was not a squeak, not a growl, but something in between—a low, rumbling chatter that set every hair on the back of Breda’s neck on end.
The hamster messenger looked up at Jimmy and smiled—a slow, deliberate curl of tiny lips.
“You’ll want to be ready.”
And then it dove into the crack and was gone.
Chapter Nineteen — The Burrower
By dawn, Ballykillduff had changed again.
The cracks in the square had multiplied overnight, spreading through the streets like a spiderweb. Chartreuse and crimson light seeped from them, pulsing in slow rhythm with the deep, subterranean chatter. The sound was constant now, vibrating in the chest, making every breath feel just slightly out of time.
Jimmy McGroggan and Breda Kavanagh stood at the edge of the largest fissure. The air that rose from it was hot and damp, smelling of soil that had never seen sunlight.
“They’re tunnelling straight into the village,” Breda said.
Jimmy shook his head. “No. This isn’t tunnelling. This is rising.”
The first sign of movement was subtle—a small shift in the light below, as though something vast was blocking it for an instant. Then came a breath. A breath. The air rushed upward in a warm, damp exhalation that carried flecks of dark soil and something that might have been fur.
The villagers gathered at a distance, whispering nervously. Father Flaherty clutched a silver flask and muttered Latin prayers under his breath.
Then the cobblestones bulged.
They rose in a slow, smooth curve, then cracked apart as something pushed through. At first it looked like a mound of earth, but then the earth fell away, revealing the glistening, curved surface beneath—too smooth to be stone, too alive to be metal.
It was a claw.
The claw withdrew, and in its place came a head—blunt, furred, but with eyes that glowed like molten copper and teeth that glistened with moisture in the flickering light. It was enormous—larger than the giant rebel hamster, larger than any creature that should have been able to move underground without splitting the land in two.
The Burrower.
Its whiskers were as long as scythes, twitching with an unnatural intelligence. When it opened its mouth, the deep chatter they’d been hearing became a single, deafening note that made glass shatter in the nearest houses.
Behind Jimmy, Breda’s voice was almost calm. “You said this was bigger. You were right.”
The Burrower’s gaze swept across the square, pausing on Jimmy. It lowered its head, snout almost touching the cobblestones, and sniffed. The air thickened, heavy with the scent of soil and cedar.
From the fissures, smaller hamsters began to emerge—hundreds of them—forming perfect lines around the Burrower like a royal guard.
And then, from between its front claws, Maureen stepped forward. She was no longer glowing faintly—she burned with chartreuse fire, every hair lit like a filament.
“Ballykillduff,” her voice rang—not in squeaks, but in the minds of every person present. “Kneel before the First Dig.”
Jimmy’s grip tightened on his rebar. “We are so unbelievably in trouble.”
Chapter Twenty — The First Dig
The Burrower didn’t move at first. It simply loomed over Ballykillduff, steaming breath curling through the morning mist, chartreuse eyes locked on the trembling crowd. The ground beneath it thrummed in slow, steady pulses, each one sinking deeper into the villagers’ bones.
Jimmy McGroggan swallowed hard. “She’s not just showing off the big guns,” he whispered to Breda. “She’s staking a claim.”
Breda kept her eyes on Maureen, who stood poised between the Burrower’s colossal front claws like a general on the prow of a warship. Her voice rolled through every mind at once, smooth and certain:
The First Dig begins now.
The smaller hamsters moved instantly, scattering into the cracks that now riddled the streets. The cobblestones shook, loosening from the soil as the ground began to sink in carefully measured increments.
“It’s not random,” Jimmy said, eyes darting from fissure to fissure. “They’re excavating in a pattern.”
Breda frowned. “A pattern for what?”
Before Jimmy could answer, the Burrower plunged both claws into the ground. The resulting tremor knocked people off their feet. From beneath, a deep, grinding roar erupted—a sound like rock being shredded into dust.
Dust, and something else.
The air filled with a dry, metallic tang, and the crimson light pouring from the fissures brightened until it outshone the chartreuse. Shapes moved below—straight lines, impossible angles, glimpses of structures that could not have been made by hand.
Jimmy’s eyes widened. “She’s not digging down. She’s digging to something.”
From her perch, Maureen fixed him with a look.
Your machines poked holes in more than one place, McGroggan. You’ve already opened the door. Now we are widening it.
The Burrower’s claws struck again, and this time, a piece of something vast broke the surface—a slab of obsidian-like stone etched with symbols that shimmered between visibility and nothingness. The sight of it made Jimmy’s teeth hurt.
Father Flaherty staggered forward, holding up his crucifix. “In the name of—”
The Burrower’s whiskers twitched, and the crucifix rusted to flakes in his hands.
From every street, the smaller hamsters began to hum, their tiny bodies vibrating in harmony with the slabs below. The air grew warmer, thicker, as if the entire village were being wrapped in some unseen cocoon.
Breda leaned close to Jimmy. “If they finish this pattern—”
“—Ballykillduff won’t just be on the map,” Jimmy said grimly. “It’ll be inside theirs.”
The Burrower raised its head, let out a single, resonant chatter, and drove both claws into the earth again.
The First Dig had begun in earnest.
Chapter Twenty-One — The Pattern Complete
By the third day of digging, Ballykillduff was unrecognisable.
The streets had become a web of deep trenches, the cobblestones stacked in neat piles by hamster labour crews. The air shimmered with alternating pulses of chartreuse and crimson, casting the village in a sickly, flickering light that made shadows twitch as though alive.
From above—if anyone had dared fly over—it would have been obvious. The fissures formed a perfect spiral, curling inward toward the village square where the Burrower crouched like a living monument.
Jimmy McGroggan and Breda Kavanagh stood on the roof of Hanrahan’s Bakery, trying to see as much of the pattern as possible without being spotted.
“It’s a sigil,” Jimmy said finally. “A summoning pattern. And it’s almost done.”
Breda’s jaw tightened. “Summoning what?”
He didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t know—he did—but because saying it aloud might make it real.
Maureen moved like a conductor before an orchestra, her glowing fur flickering in rhythm with the smaller hamsters’ movements. They carried not just soil, but fragments of black stone—more slabs like the one they’d unearthed days ago—placing each one with eerie precision along the spiral lines.
Every time a slab touched the earth, the ground hummed louder.
From the fissures, the crimson light now formed shapes—shadows of things with too many limbs and no clear faces. They didn’t climb out, but they watched. Jimmy could feel their gaze on his skin like static.
“Why aren’t they stopping?” Breda asked. “They’ve got half the village, they’ve scared everyone witless—what else do they need?”
As if in answer, Maureen looked straight up at them.
They need you, her voice whispered in their minds.
Jimmy flinched. “That’s… new.”
Before they could move, a dozen hamsters scaled the bakery wall with terrifying speed. Breda swung her boot, knocking two back into the trench below, but the rest leapt onto the roof, surrounding them in a perfect circle.
One stepped forward—a tiny grey one with a jagged scar over its left eye. It spoke in the same perfect English as the pub messenger.
“Maureen invites you to the centre of the spiral. It will not begin without you.”
Breda glanced at Jimmy. “And if we say no?”
The hamster’s smile was all teeth. “You won’t.”
Below, the Burrower shifted, its claws carving one final groove in the spiral. The hum in the ground rose to a pitch that rattled their bones.
Jimmy swallowed. “Breda… I think we’re the key.”
The hamsters moved closer. The crimson light flared. And far below the village, something vast began to turn over in its sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two — The Heart of the Spiral
They were marched to the centre like guests of honour at a nightmare parade.
The smaller hamsters formed a living corridor, their glowing eyes fixed on Jimmy and Breda as they were herded down into the village square. The air here was heavier, thick with the scent of earth, ozone, and something faintly sweet—like fruit left too long in the sun.
The Burrower loomed overhead, motionless but watchful, its whiskers trembling in the pulses of chartreuse-crimson light that now rose in spirals from the trenches. Each pulse made the slabs of black stone thrum in response, sending a pressure wave through the ground that made knees weak and vision blur.
Maureen stepped forward, her glow almost painful to look at now.
Welcome, her voice rang in their skulls. The First Dig is complete. The key has arrived.
Breda squared her shoulders. “We’re not keys. We’re people.”
Not for long.
From somewhere deep below, the low rumbling chatter rose to a roar. The slabs along the spiral lines began to sink, vanishing into the earth. As they disappeared, the light converged toward the exact centre—right where Jimmy and Breda stood.
Jimmy grabbed Breda’s arm. “It’s a focus point—they’re funnelling the energy right here!”
The ground beneath their feet turned hot, then almost soft, as if the soil itself had liquefied. Shapes began to push up through it—shapes like hands, but too long, too thin, with joints that bent the wrong way.
The Burrower lowered its head until one enormous, glistening eye was level with Jimmy’s. He saw his own reflection in its molten depths—warped, stretched, unrecognisable.
The Door opens from both sides, Maureen said, her voice now layered with something older, deeper. You opened it first. Now you will hold it open.
The light flared to blinding intensity. Jimmy felt something tugging—not at his clothes, not at his body, but at his outline, the invisible shape that made him him.
Breda’s grip tightened. “Jimmy—”
The last of the slabs vanished beneath the soil. The spiral’s lines burned with pure light, then sank away, leaving only the glowing earth at their centre.
From that glow, a shadow began to rise.
It was vast, featureless, and yet somehow unbearably detailed—a suggestion of limbs and eyes and hunger, forming and unforming as it emerged. The air shuddered around it.
The Burrower stepped back, lowering its massive head in something like reverence. Maureen bowed.
Ballykillduff, the shadow whispered without moving its mouth. You are mine now.
Chapter Twenty-Three — The Door Both Ways
The shadow towered above the square, a shifting silhouette of impossible anatomy. Its edges bled into the air like smoke in water, here solid, there nothing at all. Each time it flickered, the light around it warped, bending toward it as though it were swallowing the idea of colour itself.
Jimmy McGroggan could feel it probing him—not physically, but like a hand riffling through drawers in his mind. Memories surfaced at random: the first time he’d built a hamster wheel powered blender, the day he’d discovered chartreuse custard was mildly radioactive, the other time he’d accidentally opened a portal (to the cupboard under the stairs).
Breda Kavanagh fought to stay upright as the heat from the glowing soil rose around them. “What is it?” she demanded.
Maureen turned, her fur haloed in chartreuse fire. It is the Architect of Hollows.
Jimmy squinted. “That’s not ominous at all.”
The shadow moved—or perhaps the world shifted around it. It leaned closer, and in a voice that wasn’t a voice at all, it said:
Through you, I return. Through me, you will travel.
The ground heaved. The spiral pattern reappeared in burning light, but this time its lines didn’t end in Ballykillduff. They stretched upward, curling into the air until they bent into strange, alien geometries that hurt to look at.
Breda grabbed Jimmy’s arm. “If that’s the Door… where does it lead?”
Jimmy’s lips were dry. “Anywhere it wants.”
The Burrower let out a deep, satisfied chatter, and the hamsters began to hum again—only now their hum was joined by an answering resonance from inside the shadow. It was a duet of dimensions, the sound of two realities sliding toward alignment.
The glow intensified, lifting Jimmy and Breda clear off their feet. Their bodies felt lighter, stretched, as though parts of them were already somewhere else.
Maureen’s eyes locked on Jimmy. You will hold it open long enough.
Jimmy clenched his jaw. “And what if I don’t?”
The Architect pulsed, and for a moment, every building in Ballykillduff flickered—showing versions of themselves in ruins, overgrown with alien foliage, gnawed by teeth too large to be real.
Then this will be… immediate.
The pull grew stronger. The air warped, carrying with it the smell of strange rain, burning copper, and something like peppermint. Breda’s voice was tight. “Jimmy, if you’ve got one last invention that could stop this, now’s the time.”
He grinned faintly, even as the light swallowed his boots. “Funny you should say that.”
From inside his coat, he pulled something small, round, and ticking.
Maureen’s eyes widened. What is—
Jimmy flicked a switch. “It’s called the Doorstop.”
The ticking got louder.
Chapter Twenty-Four — The Doorstop Effect
The ticking became the loudest thing in Ballykillduff.
Not the hum of the hamsters, not the bone-rattling resonance of the spiral, not even the deep, reality-twisting pulse of the Architect—just the steady, mechanical tick… tick… tick from the palm of Jimmy McGroggan’s hand.
The shadow hesitated. It didn’t stop moving—its impossible limbs still flexed, its folds of darkness still shifted—but something in the sound made it… listen.
Jimmy smiled grimly. “See, every door needs a frame, and every frame has a tolerance. This little beauty messes with that tolerance. Keeps the hinge from settling. Stops the latch from catching. In short—”
Maureen’s voice cut across his explanation, a sharp mental blade. Destroy it.
Jimmy ignored her. “—it makes the whole thing stick.”
The ticking shifted pitch, climbing higher and higher until it was no longer a sound but a pressure in the air, the kind that made teeth ache. The glowing spiral faltered; its perfect curves stuttered into jagged, imperfect lines.
The Architect’s voice rolled through the square: Release it.
Breda, still half-suspended in the pull of the spiral, shouted over the rising whine. “Jimmy, are you sure this isn’t going to rip us inside-out?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Reasonably sure. Sixty-forty.”
The Burrower bellowed, its claws slamming into the cobblestones. Hamsters scattered and regrouped, their hum turning frantic, trying to smooth the disruption in the spiral’s energy.
Maureen’s glow flared white-hot. You meddle with forces beyond your burrow, McGroggan.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said, twisting the Doorstop’s dial, “but they’re in my burrow now.”
The spiral lines snapped—not physically, but in the strange way that light can fracture. The Architect’s form wavered, parts of it blinking in and out like a faulty projection. Each flicker carried with it a scream—not loud, but deep, the sound of something immense being denied.
Breda dropped to the ground as the pull on her body vanished. She rolled to her feet and grabbed Jimmy’s arm. “Whatever you’re doing—do it faster.”
The Doorstop’s ticking hit a final, piercing note and then stopped.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The spiral lay inert, the Architect frozen mid-lunge, the Burrower’s whiskers still.
Then the ground bucked. Not a tremor, not a quake—an impact. The spiral’s light imploded into the centre, sucking the Architect back like water down a drain. The Burrower roared in rage, its claws scrabbling at the cobblestones, but the pull took it too.
Maureen leapt for the edge of the collapsing pattern, her chartreuse blaze flickering wildly. Her eyes met Jimmy’s one last time.
This is not the end.
And then she was gone, swallowed by the vanishing glow.
Silence.
Ballykillduff stood still, the square cracked and smoking, the air tasting of rain and burnt sugar.
Breda looked at Jimmy. “Sixty-forty, huh?”
Jimmy exhaled, pocketing the Doorstop. “Guess it was the good sixty.”
Chapter Twenty-Five — Fallout in Ballykillduff
For twelve hours, Ballykillduff was silent.
No hum, no glow, no sound of claws underfoot—just the faint hiss of cooling stone in the square and the occasional plink of water dripping into fissures that no longer led anywhere.
By morning, people began to come out of their houses. They moved slowly, as if the air might still be dangerous. Children clung to their parents. Father Flaherty blessed every doorway twice, muttering under his breath about “shadows that don’t cast properly.”
Breda Kavanagh was already in the square with a clipboard. “We’ve got twenty-three houses with structural damage, three with cracks in the walls big enough to see daylight, and the post office floor fell in completely.”
Jimmy McGroggan, crouched beside one of the smaller fissures, dropped a pebble in. No glow. No hum. Just a faint splash far below.
“I’d say that’s a win,” he said, straightening up. “Could’ve been the whole village.”
Breda shot him a look. “Could’ve been no village at all.”
Jimmy gave a sheepish grin. “Yeah, well, I prefer the dramatic save.”
The villagers gathered to hear an explanation. Jimmy did his best to make it sound less like “I accidentally opened a multi-dimensional hamster portal” and more like “a minor mechanical mishap with unusual wildlife involvement.”
Half the crowd seemed relieved. The other half just looked suspicious.
It wasn’t until dusk that Breda noticed something odd. She was walking past Hanrahan’s Bakery when she saw movement in the gutter above. A small, grey shape slipped into the downpipe—quick, silent, and gone before she could blink.
She told Jimmy.
He frowned. “Could be just a normal one.”
Breda folded her arms. “You think anything about this place is normal anymore?”
That night, Jimmy worked in his shed, tinkering with the Doorstop. The device sat in the centre of his bench, its surface still faintly warm. He swore he could feel a tiny vibration in it, like a cat purring very, very far away.
Out in the dark, behind the shed, a single pair of chartreuse eyes blinked once, then vanished into the shadows.
Chapter Twenty-Six — The Whisper in the Shed
Jimmy McGroggan woke at 3:17 a.m. to the sound of ticking.
Not the steady, reassuring tick of his workshop clock. This was sharper, cleaner—like the sound of a watch pressed against bone.
He sat up in bed, listening. The ticking wasn’t coming from inside the house. It was coming from the shed.
That alone was enough to get him out of bed, into his boots, and into the cold night air. The wind was still, but the stars looked unusually sharp, as though the sky had been polished. He could feel the frost beginning to form on the grass underfoot.
The shed loomed at the bottom of the garden, a crooked shape patched together with corrugated tin, plywood, and the odd road sign he’d “rescued” from roadworks.
The ticking grew louder as he approached. It wasn’t regular. It had pauses. Hesitations. Almost… words.
Jimmy unlocked the door and stepped inside. The smell of oil, solder, and burnt toast (he’d been experimenting again) wrapped around him.
The ticking came from the workbench.
The Doorstop sat there exactly where he’d left it after the collapse of the First Dig—small, round, metallic, faintly scorched. But now, faint green light pulsed from its seams, timed perfectly to the ticks.
He reached for it.
Don’t.
The voice was so soft he almost missed it. It came not from the air, but from the floorboards.
Jimmy froze. “Who’s there?”
The reply was not in words, but in rhythm—taps, like tiny claws. Tap-tap… pause… tap-tap-tap… pause. It was Morse code. Jimmy’s brain fished up the translation automatically:
WE SEE YOU
A shiver crawled up his spine.
He leaned down, pressing an ear to the floorboards. The wood was warm—unnaturally warm—and beneath it, the faint scrape of something moving.
“Who’s we?” he asked.
The answer came as a long series of rapid ticks, the green glow from the Doorstop flaring in time with them.
SECOND DIG.
The warmth under the floor grew, and something tapped once—hard enough to shake the shed.
Jimmy straightened, backing toward the door. His eyes flicked to the shadow outside the window. For a split second, he thought he saw a familiar pair of chartreuse eyes watching. Then they blinked out.
Behind him, the Doorstop ticked again. Louder. Faster. Almost… excited.
Chapter Twenty-Seven — Chartreuse Rain
It started just before dawn.
Breda Kavanagh was on her way to the bakery for the early loaf when she noticed the first drop—fat, slow, and not at all the right colour. It splashed on the cobblestones in front of her with a wet plop, spreading into a stain the exact shade of chartreuse fur.
She looked up. The clouds overhead weren’t grey—they were a deep, unnatural green, lit from within as though someone had wired them with fairy lights.
The second drop landed on her sleeve. She sniffed it—sharp, metallic, and sweet all at once, like lightning mixed with boiled sweets.
Then the rain began in earnest.
It didn’t fall in sheets, but in slow, deliberate splats, each drop hitting with enough force to send a shiver up the spine. And everywhere a drop landed, it left a faintly glowing mark—on stone, on grass, even on skin.
By the time she reached the square, half the village was outside, staring at the glowing freckles blooming across the streets. Some people tried to wipe them away, but the marks only spread, tracing thin lines outward like roots.
Jimmy McGroggan appeared from his shed, hair sticking up as if he’d been electrocuted. He held a tin mug under the rain for a moment, then tipped the contents onto a patch of gravel. The liquid hissed, leaving a perfect circle of glow that began to creep toward the nearest cobblestone.
“It’s mapping,” Jimmy muttered. “Marking… something.”
Breda frowned. “Marking what?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled a battered field scope from his coat and peered at the glowing lines forming on the ground.
What he saw made his mouth go dry. The marks weren’t random—they were connecting, bending, and curling into arcs.
“It’s a pattern,” he said. “The same kind of pattern Maureen used for the First Dig… but bigger. A lot bigger.”
From somewhere above the green clouds, a low rumble rolled across the sky—not thunder, but something alive.
Every drop that hit the ground pulsed in response.
Breda swallowed. “Jimmy… I think the map’s drawing us in.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight — The Map Underfoot
By the third day of chartreuse rain, Ballykillduff was no longer just a village—it was the centre of a glowing, living diagram.
The marks left by the rain hadn’t faded. Instead, they’d linked together into intricate loops and spirals, cutting across gardens, streets, and fields. The lines were too perfect for chance—no smudges, no breaks, no irregularities. They pulsed faintly at night, casting green light that turned every shadow into something suspect.
Jimmy McGroggan spent hours pacing the streets with a measuring tape and a battered chalkboard, jotting down numbers and sketches. Breda followed, carrying the thermos and occasionally stopping him from walking into lampposts.
“What is it?” she asked for the fifth time.
Jimmy stopped, crouched, and traced one of the lines with his finger. “It’s… not just a pattern. It’s a blueprint.”
Breda tilted her head. “For what?”
He looked up at her with the kind of expression that said he wished he didn’t know. “For digging.”
She stared. “Again?”
“Bigger,” Jimmy said. “Whatever the First Dig was for, this is it… scaled up. If the First Dig was a doorway, this is—”
“A motorway?”
“—a mouth,” Jimmy finished.
They both went silent.
From the east field came a faint sound—soft at first, then sharper: click, click, scrape. They followed it until they reached a patch where three of the glowing lines converged. The soil there was shifting, moving as though something beneath it was turning over in its sleep.
Then, without warning, the glow under their feet rippled, and a new line shot outward along the road—growing at the speed of a galloping horse, carving the map wider and wider.
Jimmy dropped to one knee and pressed his ear to the cobblestone.
From deep below, faint but clear, came a rhythmic tapping.
WE BEGIN SOON.
Chapter Twenty-Nine — The Hamster Without a Name
It was Breda who spotted it first.
She was on her way back from the shop when she noticed movement in the guttering above the newsagent’s. At first, she thought it was one of the last stragglers from the First Dig—another chartreuse-eyed troublemaker.
But this one was… wrong.
For starters, it was grey. Just grey. No glowing fur, no swirling marks on its back. Its whiskers were shorter than Maureen’s had been, and its eyes were an unsettling, pale silver.
It also wasn’t chewing anything.
It was listening.
The creature sat perfectly still, its head tilted, ears twitching in time with something Breda couldn’t hear. Then it hopped down onto a drainpipe and froze again—except this time, its whiskers vibrated like the antennae of a radio set.
Breda took a cautious step closer. “Hello?”
The hamster looked at her for a long moment… then turned to face the nearest lamppost. The light flickered twice, buzzed, and then settled into a low hum.
Jimmy arrived just in time to see the hamster tap its tiny paw against the lamppost base. The hum changed pitch.
“What in the sweet name of solder—” Jimmy muttered.
The hamster glanced at him, twitched its whiskers, and the field scope in his coat pocket gave a sharp click, turning itself on without being touched.
Breda’s jaw tightened. “It’s talking to your gadgets.”
The hamster bounded closer, stopping a few inches from Jimmy’s boots. Its eyes locked on his, and for a moment, his brain was full of a rapid series of clicks, ticks, and faint buzzing tones—like listening to twenty clocks at once.
When the noise faded, Jimmy understood exactly one thing:
It wanted to show him something.
Without waiting, the hamster darted down the street, pausing only to make a nearby radio crackle to life. Static poured from the speaker, but under it was a faint, almost-whisper:
Second Dig. Not theirs. Ours.
Chapter Thirty — The Hollow Horizon
The next morning, Ballykillduff woke to a horizon it didn’t recognise.
From the top of the hill by McSorley’s farm, Jimmy and Breda could see it clearly: a faint shimmer, like heat haze, running in a perfect circle around the village. It wasn’t just in one direction—it was everywhere, as though Ballykillduff had been dropped into the middle of a crystal dome.
The grey hamster—still nameless, though Breda was tempted to call it “Clocky”—sat on the fencepost beside them, whiskers twitching. Every few seconds, the shimmer rippled in response.
Jimmy adjusted his field scope and swore under his breath. “Oh, that’s not good.”
“What is it?” Breda asked.
“It’s not haze,” he said. “It’s… thin.”
Breda frowned. “Thin?”
He lowered the scope and gestured toward the horizon. “That’s the edge of us. Beyond it, there’s… something else.”
As if on cue, the shimmer pulsed, and for a heartbeat the view beyond it changed. Instead of fields and distant trees, there was a twisted version of Ballykillduff—leaning buildings, streets clogged with creeping green roots, and in the sky, shapes that didn’t belong anywhere near clouds.
The image flickered away, replaced by the familiar landscape.
Breda shivered. “I think I preferred not knowing.”
The hamster leapt from the fencepost, landing neatly on Jimmy’s shoulder. It tapped his ear twice—its new way of saying listen.
In the distance, deep under the earth, there came a sound: slow, deliberate, and massive. A grinding, turning, chewing sound.
The hamster clicked rapidly, and Jimmy’s eyes went wide.
“It says… the Hollow Horizon isn’t a barrier,” he said quietly. “It’s a lid.”
Chapter Thirty-One — The First Tooth
That night, the grinding grew louder.
It came in waves, rumbling through the ground like a far-off quarry, shaking the mugs on kitchen shelves and rattling every loose nail in Jimmy McGroggan’s shed. The grey hamster sat on the workbench, whiskers quivering like a tuning fork, eyes fixed on the floor.
At 2:03 a.m., the sound changed. It became sharper. More… deliberate.
Jimmy was halfway through tightening the bolts on his latest “possibly safe” contraption when he realised what the new sound was:
Biting.
He dropped the wrench and grabbed his scope.
Breda burst in a moment later, still in her coat. “You hear it too?”
Before he could answer, a deep CRACK split the air, followed by a muffled thud. The hamster leapt to the door, chittering urgently.
They followed it through the sleeping village, across the green, and down the east road to the old sheep pasture where three of the glowing rain-lines met. The soil there was bulging upward, pushed from below.
Then, with a final shudder, something broke through the surface.
It wasn’t a claw. It wasn’t even a paw.
It was a tooth—huge, pale, curved like the prow of a ship. Its surface was ridged, and faint green light pulsed inside it, as though veins ran through the enamel.
The tooth sank back into the ground almost as quickly as it had appeared, leaving a deep, wet hole behind.
Jimmy swallowed. “Well. That’s… new.”
The hamster tapped his boot, then made a sound like two gears locking together.
Jimmy went pale. “It says that wasn’t part of the Dig. That was part of the thing the Dig wakes up.”
Breda glanced at the widening hole. “And how big is that?”
The hamster clicked once.
Jimmy took a deep breath. “Big enough to need more than one tooth.”
Chapter Thirty-Two — The Lattice Beneath
By morning, the pasture was cordoned off with whatever the villagers could find—old gates, rolls of chicken wire, even a few garden gnomes pressed into service as “warning markers.”
But the hole where the tooth had broken through was still there, steaming faintly in the early light. And the green map-lines had changed. They no longer simply met at the pasture—they flowed into it, curling down into the hole like veins feeding a heart.
Jimmy, Breda, and the grey hamster stood on the edge, peering down.
At first, all they could see was darkness. Then Jimmy adjusted the dial on his battered scope and hissed in a breath.
“Breda… it’s not just dirt down there. It’s… built.”
“Built?”
He passed her the scope. Beneath the soil, far below the roots, there was a structure—a webwork of pale, gleaming ribs arched in impossible curves. Each rib was covered in grooves, and in those grooves pulsed the same chartreuse light as the rain-lines above.
“It’s a lattice,” Jimmy said. “A skeleton. We’ve been living on top of… something’s chest.”
Before Breda could respond, the ground trembled, and a sound like wind rushing through a thousand pipes rose from the hole. But it wasn’t wind—it was breathing.
The hamster stiffened, whiskers rigid. A rapid series of clicks burst from it, and Jimmy caught the gist:
It’s waking up, but not all at once. We have time—if we move now.
Breda frowned. “Move where?”
Jimmy glanced at the swirling lines under their feet. “Down there.”
Breda stared at him. “Into the thing’s ribcage?”
He gave a thin grin. “Well, I can’t fix what I can’t reach.”
The hamster tapped its paw twice—agreement.
Far below, something shifted in the lattice, sending up a warm gust that smelled of iron, moss, and a long-forgotten cellar.
Chapter Thirty-Three — Into the Ribcage
By noon, Jimmy had assembled what he called “perfectly reasonable descent gear” and what Breda called “a bag of ropes, hooks, and very bad ideas.”
The hamster, perched on his shoulder, watched every knot he tied with unnerving attention, occasionally tapping a paw against the rope in a way that made Jimmy retie it.
The hole in the pasture had grown since dawn. The soil at the edges had crumbled away, revealing more of the pale lattice below. From this angle, the ribs looked less like bone and more like the arches of an ancient cathedral—except no cathedral ever swayed slightly as though breathing.
Villagers had gathered at the fence line to watch. Someone had brought a flask. Someone else was selling sandwiches. Nobody seemed entirely sure whether they were here to help or to witness something they could tell their grandchildren about later.
Breda adjusted her harness and muttered, “If we die, I’m haunting you.”
Jimmy grinned. “Fair enough.”
They descended slowly, the ropes creaking as they lowered themselves past layers of damp earth and tangled roots. The air grew warmer the deeper they went, and a faint pulse of light ran through the ribs in time with the ground’s slow breathing.
About twenty feet down, they reached the first rib. It was smooth, almost polished, and warm to the touch—too warm for something buried for who-knew-how-long. Jimmy ran his fingers over one of the grooves, and his expression changed.
“These aren’t just decorations. They’re channels. For… something.”
The hamster chirped softly, its whiskers brushing the rib. Jimmy could feel a faint vibration—like distant machinery.
Then the rib moved.
Not much—just a subtle flex, as if stretching—but enough to make their ropes sway.
Breda’s eyes widened. “Jimmy… this thing’s not just waking up. It’s making room.”
Above them, the villagers gasped as a low, resonant hum filled the air. The ribs around the pasture shifted, just slightly—but enough to reveal a deep, vertical shaft between them.
The hamster clicked once. Jimmy swallowed hard.
“It says that’s the way to the heart.”
Chapter Thirty-Four — The Heart Engine
The shaft between the ribs was narrower than Jimmy expected—just wide enough for them to rappel side by side. The glow here was brighter, running in steady pulses along the grooves in the bone. Every time it flared, the air warmed, and a low thrum rattled their teeth.
The hamster rode in the pouch of Jimmy’s coat, its silver eyes darting in every direction.
“Feels like climbing down a giant throat,” Breda muttered.
Jimmy chuckled nervously. “Comforting thought, that.”
They dropped another twenty feet before the shaft widened abruptly, opening into a cavern so large the far wall vanished into haze. At its centre stood a massive structure—part organic, part mechanical—a pulsing sphere of bone, metal, and something that looked disturbingly like muscle.
The grooves in the ribs above fed directly into it, their chartreuse glow spiralling inward like veins into a heart.
“That,” Jimmy whispered, “isn’t just a heart. It’s an engine.”
The hamster tapped his chest twice. He frowned. “It says this thing… moves. The whole structure. We’ve been living inside the shell of something designed to walk.”
Breda stared. “Walk where?”
Before Jimmy could answer, the sphere gave a single, deep boom, and the glow intensified. Several massive rods of bone shifted, revealing gears the size of houses grinding together in slow, deliberate turns.
The thrum became a steady beat, and the ground under their feet shivered with each pulse.
Jimmy took a step forward, eyes scanning the heart-engine’s surface. There—half-buried under a layer of cartilage—was something metallic. Not bone. Not muscle. A hatch.
“Breda,” he said slowly, “I think someone’s been in here before.”
Chapter Thirty-Five — The Hatch
Jimmy approached the hatch with the caution of a man who had opened far too many things he shouldn’t have in his life. The metal was old—pitted, scratched, and coated in a fine film of bone dust—but unmistakably made.
Breda crouched beside him, brushing away cartilage with her sleeve. “This doesn’t look like part of… whatever this thing is.”
“It’s not,” Jimmy said, running his fingers over the seams. “It’s bolted in. Whoever put it here… wanted to get inside the heart-engine.”
The hamster hopped from his pocket onto the hatch, pressing its tiny paws against the metal. A faint click echoed, and the surface shifted beneath its weight, like it recognised the touch.
There was a hiss—dry, stale air escaping—and the hatch swung inward just enough for Jimmy to get his fingers under it.
The smell hit them first: a sharp, chemical tang mixed with something faintly sweet. Inside was a narrow crawlspace lined with cables, pipes, and strange, fungal growths that pulsed in time with the engine’s beat.
They crawled through, the space tight enough that Jimmy’s tool belt scraped along the walls. The hamster darted ahead, pausing at junctions to glance back as if urging them forward.
After what felt like twenty yards, the tunnel opened into a chamber entirely unlike the rest of the ribcage. The walls here were metal plates riveted together, covered in switches, levers, and dials—all labelled in a language neither of them recognised.
In the centre sat a chair bolted to the floor, facing a massive, round viewport. Beyond the glass was… darkness. Not just the absence of light, but a deep, swallowing black that seemed to press against the window.
Jimmy stepped closer, breath fogging the glass.
Something moved in that darkness.
Not quickly—slow, deliberate, and impossibly large. A pale curve passed across the viewport, followed by a ripple of faint green lights.
Breda’s voice was barely a whisper. “Is that outside?”
Jimmy didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at the lever next to the chair—painted bright red and marked with the only English word in the entire chamber: WAKE.
Chapter Thirty-Six — The Temptation of the Lever
Jimmy stared at the lever, his hand hovering just above it. His pulse was pounding in time with the deep, slow beat of the heart-engine.
Breda took a step closer, her voice sharp. “Don’t.”
He glanced at her. “You don’t even know what it does.”
“It says WAKE, Jimmy. There’s only so many ways that can go, and all of them end badly.”
The hamster leapt onto the console, whiskers flicking in agitation. It began clicking furiously, the sound urgent and uneven. Jimmy frowned, listening.
“It says the lever is… not for us. It’s for them.”
Breda’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s ‘them’?”
The hamster clicked again—slower this time—and Jimmy’s face went pale.
“It says the Diggers. The original ones. Whoever built this thing into the ground.”
Before they could speak again, a low vibration rolled through the floor. The viewport fogged over, and in the glass appeared a faint reflection—not of Jimmy or Breda, but of a tall, spindly figure standing directly behind them.
They spun around.
Nothing.
But the air had changed—thicker, colder, with a faint smell of rust and brine.
The hamster froze, its silver eyes locked on the lever. Slowly, without looking away, it tapped the metal base of the console three times.
Somewhere far above, in Ballykillduff, the green rain-lines flared bright enough to turn night into day.
Breda swallowed. “Jimmy… if that lever isn’t for us, what happens if someone else pulls it?”
Jimmy looked at the reflection in the glass again—and this time, the spindly figure was closer.
Chapter Thirty-Seven — The Thing in the Glass
The spindly figure’s reflection lingered in the viewport, even though there was nothing there in the room with them. Its proportions were wrong—arms too long, legs bending backwards, and a head that seemed to tilt and turn independently of the body.
Its face—or what passed for one—was a pale, oval mask with no features except a single vertical slit running from top to bottom.
Breda whispered, “Tell me that’s just a trick of the light.”
Jimmy shook his head slowly. “Light doesn’t breathe.”
And it was breathing—slowly, the slit widening and narrowing in perfect time with the heart-engine’s beat.
The hamster made a sound they had never heard before: a low, continuous hiss. Its whiskers were stiff, its body hunched as if ready to leap—either at the lever or at whatever was watching them.
Then, in the reflection, the figure raised one long finger and pointed at the lever marked WAKE.
Jimmy felt the weight of that gesture like a hand on his chest. He had the sudden, insane certainty that if he pulled the lever, the figure would step through the glass.
“Jimmy,” Breda said sharply. “Back away.”
He forced himself to take a step back, breaking eye contact with the reflection—only to realise the glass wasn’t showing the control room anymore.
It was showing outside.
And outside wasn’t Ballykillduff. It was a vast, black plain under a sky of shifting green light. Shapes moved out there—towering forms with legs like the ribs they’d climbed through, walking slowly across the horizon.
The spindly figure was gone from the reflection, but Jimmy knew it hadn’t left.
The hamster tapped the console twice, then clicked one word Jimmy understood:
Close.
Chapter Thirty-Eight — Closing the Window
Jimmy’s hands hovered over the console, unsure which of the alien switches or levers might “close” something without waking something else.
Breda scanned the panel, eyes darting over the incomprehensible labels. “We’re guessing blind here, Jimmy. You know that, right?”
The hamster scrambled across the controls, pausing beside a small, rusted dial half-hidden beneath a cluster of wires. It tapped the dial three times, then gave a decisive click.
Jimmy didn’t hesitate—he turned it.
At once, the thrum of the heart-engine deepened, and the green glow in the grooves dimmed to a low pulse. Outside the viewport, the black plain blurred, the towering shapes fading like shadows at dusk. The glass darkened, its reflection twisting back into the image of the control room.
But the spindly figure was still there.
It stood closer now, its slit-face almost pressed to the inside of the glass. Slowly, it lifted its head, the vertical opening widening into a jagged oval.
From somewhere beyond the viewport came a faint, wet sound—like lips peeling apart.
Breda stepped back, one hand on Jimmy’s arm. “That’s not closing, Jimmy. That’s coming through.”
The hamster made a sharp, rapid clicking—panic, unmistakable. It scurried to the WAKE lever and wrapped its tiny paws around the base, chittering furiously.
Jimmy understood. “You’re saying if we do pull it, it’ll open all the way. And if we don’t—”
The figure in the glass raised both hands and pressed them flat against the inside. The metal frame of the viewport groaned, bending inward as though the glass was softening.
Breda’s voice was barely a whisper. “We need another option. Now.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine — The Third Lever
Jimmy’s eyes darted across the control panel. Between the WAKE lever and the rusted dial was something he hadn’t noticed before—half-hidden beneath a crust of bone dust and fungal growth: a narrow bronze lever, smaller than the rest, marked with a single symbol that looked like an open circle being snapped shut.
The hamster saw it too. It froze for a heartbeat, then scampered over and began clawing frantically at the fungus, revealing more of the strange marking.
Breda’s voice was tense. “Is that… a close switch?”
“Or an eject button,” Jimmy muttered.
The spindly figure’s hands pressed harder against the viewport. Thin, hairline fractures webbed across the glass, and each pulse of the heart-engine made them widen. From outside, the green light grew brighter, spilling in thin threads through the cracks.
The hamster let out a sharp, insistent trill.
Jimmy grabbed the bronze lever and yanked it down.
The reaction was immediate: the fractures in the viewport froze, then slowly began knitting back together, the glass darkening as though the plain beyond was being painted over with night. The spindly figure tilted its head in what might have been curiosity… or disappointment… before dissolving into black mist that seeped into nothingness.
The hum of the engine faded to a whisper, and the warmth in the air lessened. For the first time in hours, Jimmy realised he wasn’t sweating.
Breda let out a long breath. “Well. That was… whatever that was.”
But the hamster was still staring at the viewport, its silver eyes wide. It clicked once—softly.
Jimmy frowned. “What does that mean?”
The hamster looked at him, and Jimmy heard the words in his head, not through sound but through certainty:
That wasn’t the only one.
Chapter Forty — The Sound from Above
The control room was still, save for the faint creak of cooling metal and the slow, steady beat of the heart-engine far below.
Jimmy slumped into the bolted-down chair, rubbing his eyes. “Right. That’s done. No more spindly nightmares pressing their faces to the window.”
Breda didn’t reply. She was staring up at the ceiling—more specifically, at the hairline crack running across it.
“Jimmy… was that here before?”
Before he could answer, something tapped from the other side of the crack. A sharp, deliberate sound. Once. Twice. Three times.
The hamster’s fur bristled. It turned to face the noise, ears twitching as if hearing a whole language in the rhythm.
“What’s it saying?” Jimmy asked.
The hamster clicked back, a short exchange like Morse code for rodents. Then it looked up at him and said—clear as a thought—
It wants to come down.
The tapping grew louder, now accompanied by a deep, resonant hum that wasn’t the heart-engine. The green lines on the control room floor began to brighten again, but this time they pulsed in a pattern—spiralling inward toward the centre of the room.
Breda backed up against the wall. “Jimmy, I think we just locked one door and they’ve found another.”
A fine drizzle of bone dust rained down from the crack as something heavy shifted above. Then—slowly—the ceiling began to bulge inward.
The hamster scrambled onto Jimmy’s shoulder, claws digging in. “We have to move,” Jimmy said, already scanning the panel for anything that might seal the ceiling.
Before he could choose, the bulge split—and a long, jointed limb pushed through, its surface the same pale colour as the ribs outside, but covered in fine, metallic filaments that twitched like antennae.
The limb reached down toward the spiralling green light on the floor.
And the heart-engine’s beat sped up.
Chapter Forty-One — The Limb That Searched
The limb descended slowly, joint by joint, its metallic filaments twitching as if tasting the air. It hovered just above the spiral of green light, each twitch making the heart-engine’s beat quicken.
Jimmy grabbed Breda’s arm and pulled her toward the hatch. “We have to go before it finds whatever it’s looking for.”
The hamster leapt to the console and began pawing frantically at a cluster of switches Jimmy hadn’t dared touch. The panel lit up with a thin red glow, and the floor beneath the spiral shifted—panels sliding back to reveal a shaft dropping deep into the machinery below.
The limb paused. Then, with unsettling speed, it plunged down the shaft.
The entire control room shook. Somewhere far below, metal shrieked, followed by a wet, tearing sound that made Jimmy’s stomach lurch. The heart-engine’s glow flared bright enough to blind them, then dimmed to a flicker.
Breda gripped the edge of the console. “It’s feeding. Whatever that thing is, it’s feeding from the engine.”
The hamster clicked urgently, and Jimmy caught only part of the translation: —not alone.
And then they heard it: another tap-tap-tap from above, further away this time, but joined by a second, different rhythm—slower, heavier, as if something much larger was making its way toward the opening.
Jimmy’s mind raced. If one limb could drain the heart-engine, what could two do?
The hamster darted to the viewport and pressed its tiny paws against the glass. The black plain beyond flickered back into view, and for a split second, Jimmy saw movement out there—two massive forms, one pale, one dark, striding toward each other across the horizon.
The hamster looked back at him. We are inside one of them.
Chapter Forty-Two — The March of Giants
The words We are inside one of them rattled around Jimmy’s skull like loose bolts in a tin can.
The control room seemed smaller now, as though the realisation had shrunk the space around them. Breda looked at the hamster, then at Jimmy. “Inside… what exactly?”
Jimmy swallowed. “A… walking thing. A… big walking thing.”
The hamster clicked once. Colossus.
Before Jimmy could ask more, the entire room tilted, pitching them sideways. Tools rolled across the floor, a wrench clanging into the viewport frame. Outside, the black plain shifted, and the horizon leaned crazily.
The colossus was moving.
Through the viewport, another shape came into focus—a pale titan striding across the plain toward them, its ribs arched high above a glowing, pulsing core. It was like looking into a mirror twisted by nightmares.
The limb in the shaft retracted suddenly, curling upward into the ceiling. The green spiral on the floor flickered out, replaced by a jagged crack of light.
Breda gripped the console. “Jimmy… are we walking toward that thing?”
The hamster’s reply was immediate. Yes.
Jimmy felt the heart-engine’s beat quicken, each thud now accompanied by a low, echoing bellow that seemed to come from all directions. The pale colossus answered with a bellow of its own, the sound shaking the glass in the viewport.
“They’re… talking,” Jimmy murmured.
“No,” the hamster clicked. They are challenging.
Outside, the distance between the two giants closed. Far below, tiny shapes—no bigger than ants from this height—scurried across the plain, scattering away from where the titans’ paths would meet.
Breda stared at the advancing pale giant, then at the glowing WAKE lever behind them. “Jimmy… I think we’re about to find out what happens if this thing fights.”
Chapter Forty-Three — Clash of the Colossi
The two giants closed the distance with terrifying speed, each step sending tremors through the control room. Panels rattled, dust fell from the ceiling, and the viewport groaned as though it, too, was afraid of what was coming.
Jimmy gripped the console to steady himself. “We’re inside a living skyscraper that’s about to punch another living skyscraper. That’s… fine. That’s fine. Totally fine.”
Breda’s knuckles were white against the edge of the panel. “Jimmy, if this one falls, so do we.”
Outside, the pale colossus let out a bellow that cracked across the plain like thunder. Its ribs flared open, exposing a pulsing core of light. From the dark colossus they rode within, a low, grinding roar answered—metal scraping against stone, bone against bone.
The giants collided.
The impact was apocalyptic. The pale titan slammed its rib-limbs into the dark one, the sound like mountains shattering. The control room tilted violently; Jimmy was thrown to the floor, sliding across to the viewport.
Through the glass, he saw the pale colossus’s glowing core lance forward—energy arcing across the plain, striking their giant square in the chest. The heart-engine within roared in pain, every beat doubling, tripling, until Jimmy thought his own ribs would burst.
The hamster clung to a lever, squeaking and clicking in panic. Stabilise!
Jimmy hauled himself upright. “How the hell do we stabilise a walking nightmare?!”
The hamster jabbed a paw toward the WAKE lever.
Breda’s eyes widened. “You can’t mean—if we pull that, we’re not just stabilising, we’re unleashing it!”
The hamster clicked again, desperate. If not, we die.
The viewport filled with the sight of the pale colossus raising both rib-limbs high, preparing to bring them down like axes.
Jimmy’s hand hovered over the lever.
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 