X the unknown, p.1
X the Unknown, page 1
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Title page
Introduction
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Copyright
About the Book
A giant fissure has opened in the ground in Buckinghamshire.
Suddenly the nearby town of Broughton Green is the scene of several horrific and unexplained deaths, and the hospital has reported a massive increase in the number of deformed foetuses showing up on scans. Then a young boy is found in his bed, horribly burned and close to death.
It falls to Dr Adam Royston, a scientific researcher working at the nearby military base, to investigate the mysterious events that have brought terror to this quiet corner of England. He is certain that the events are linked to the fissure in the earth and that a deadly primeval force has been awakened.
But how can he fight a monster that could have been lurking beneath the earth for millions of years?
About the Author
Shaun Hutson is one of the UK’s best known horror writers. He is the author of more than sixty books. He lives in Buckinghamshire.
Author’s Introduction
X THE UNKNOWN was originally released in 1956 and was probably one of Hammer’s first real horror films (even though it appears perhaps more science fiction-orientated at first glance). It has a Gothic feel to it that would become a trademark of the studio’s output in the years to follow. It was given its title to exploit the audience appeal of the X-certificate category that the British Board of Film Censors had brought in five years earlier, in the same way as the movie version of The Quatermass Xperiment had been opportunistically titled shortly before. But, whatever its title’s roots, X the Unknown is first and foremost a monster movie, in my opinion; it just happens to feature a very unconventional monster.
I’d always liked the film and wondered if I could somehow ‘freshen up’ the story and make it more accessible to a modern readership while retaining its appeal for a more traditional audience. I was also delighted to be given the chance to work on the novelisation of a film that is even older than I am!
The biggest dilemma, in my humble opinion, when doing a novelisation is the problem of how faithful to be to the script you’re working from. Obviously some things have to be changed but I think that the basic structure of the screenplay should be retained. You shouldn’t start inventing loads of new characters and scenes that weren’t there originally just because you feel like indulging in a bit of artistic licence. However, in certain circumstances some fine-tuning is almost unavoidable. X the Unknown is a case in point. When it was made (in the 1950s) the subjects of nuclear war, radioactivity and that kind of thing were of far more immediate concern than they are now. After all, the Second World War had only been over for slightly more than ten years and people had seen the modern super-powers rushing to develop and accumulate nuclear weapons. Films in America and the rest of the world would reflect this trend in their depiction of creatures sent out of control by exposure to radiation (films like Tarantula, Them, The Black Scorpion and Godzilla, to name but four) but Hammer did it particularly well with X the Unknown because the movie’s scale was smaller and hence – especially for a British audience – more accessible and more credible.
My first consideration was whether or not to leave the story set in the 1950s. I decided to update it to a modern-day setting and try to make it more relevant to today. Hence the references to the war in Afghanistan and to events like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011. Many people will read the book without ever having seen the film so it had to retain both a contemporary feel and the Gothic qualities of the original. This meant having to change quite a bit of the dialogue so that it read more convincingly. Also, all the military equipment that is featured had to be updated. In the film the army wander around on foot most of the time and seem to have one helicopter to cover the whole of Scotland! Policemen have to find public phones to use to alert others to various dangers. Obviously nowadays there is a mobile phone in everyone’s pocket and lots of the action had to be adapted to take account of such technological advances. But for the most part I wanted to keep the same structure and remain true to what the original scriptwriter (Jimmy Sangster) had created, especially as that structure worked so well. Otherwise the most noticeable change I made was to the age of the main character, Doctor Royston, who was played in the film by Dean Jagger who was then fifty-three. I thought it might work better if this character was younger in the novelisation so that was why I made that particular alteration. I hope readers agree with my choice.
Other than such changes I’ve stayed true to the original (with the addition of some new characters here and there and a new subplot that I hope renders the action more contemporary) because it has all the trademarks of a Hammer film and you don’t mess with those if you’ve got any sense. It’s a classic case of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ and this most definitely wasn’t broke!
When I did the novelisation for Twins of Evil I inserted a number of Hammer ‘in-jokes’ (characters named after Hammer creations from other films that the studio had made and that kind of thing) for connoisseurs of the genre and lovers of Hammer and I couldn’t resist doing the same again here. Diehard fans will doubtless notice them – or, at least, I hope they do. They are my personal homage and nod of respect to the studio and what it produced.
So I hope you enjoy reading X the Unknown as much as I did writing it. The film is a wonderful reminder of the beginning of Hammer as an unstoppable and unparalleled force in the world of horror films. One of the first steps in what was to become a golden age for the genre and for that company in particular. Their masterful interpretations of Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy would follow in the next two or three years and achieve worldwide success and acclaim but before these classics they gave us X the Unknown. And it’s one hell of a monster movie!
SHAUN HUTSON
This book is dedicated with love to the memory of my dad.
‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’
Albert Einstein
One
IT WAS LIKE walking through an open sewer.
The stench was appalling. It clogged Private Vic Dawson’s nostrils and no matter how hard he tried to mask the rancid odour by breathing through his mouth the effect was useless. He hawked and spat, then stood motionless for a moment as he tried once again to get his bearings in the darkness. He squinted through the night but could barely see more than two or three feet in any direction when he took his night-vision goggles off. With them on everything glowed neon green but prolonged wear gave him headaches. Whether others suffered like this Dawson had never thought to ask but he hated wearing the bloody things and now chose to push them up onto the top of his helmet. He’d had them on for more than an hour already and his head was pounding.
Dawson took a step to his right and promptly sank up to his knee in the marshy ground.
‘Bollocks,’ he hissed under his breath.
The ground had been glutinous enough even before the sudden downpour that had fallen twenty minutes earlier. Now it was like a swamp. There were stretches of firmer ground here and there but for the most part the terrain was unstable and boggy and Da wson was sure that he was crossing the worst of it. Just his luck to get stuck with the shittiest part of the area. If he didn’t have bad luck he wouldn’t have any luck at all, he told himself. Still muttering, he dragged his leg clear of the sucking ooze and planted his foot before him, hoping he would find some of the more solid earth.
Away to his right something moved and he spun round, sliding his night-vision goggles back into place to help him locate the source of the sound. A large frog had emerged from one of the deeper pools of rancid water and it sat among some reeds for a moment before sliding back into the enveloping blackness. Dawson shook his head and walked on, glancing down at the Geiger counter he carried.
It was clicking quietly but sporadically. Sometimes the sounds would cease altogether, only to begin again after a few more seconds. Dawson aimed the probe at to the ground straight head of him, frowning when the needle on the meter moved as the clicking intensified. He stood still again, holding the device a couple of feet above the soil, sweeping it around him in a circle. The clicking was louder immediately in front of him. He trudged on again, slipping calf deep into the sucking mud.
That same appalling stench still filled his nostrils and he remembered that it was methane. Marsh gas. Small clouds of it were released every time he moved, expelled by the earth like reeking breath from rotten lungs. It was, he also remembered, highly combustible. Best not light a cigarette, then, he mused as he struggled on. And a cigarette was the one thing he really wanted right now. His decision to give up had not been taken lightly. It was costing him far too much and he knew it was no good for his health but he’d been smoking since he was thirteen, for Christ’s sake. Ten years later and he was smoking thirty a day, sometimes more. His dad had died of pancreatic cancer a year earlier but that wasn’t what had prompted his decision to pack it in. After all, he’d told himself, pancreatic cancer wasn’t caused by smoking anyway. It was the financial consideration that had decided him. His pay didn’t stretch to the luxury of so many cigarettes. He’d thought about just cutting down but had then decided he might as well go the whole hog and just give up tobacco completely. So far it wasn’t proving too successful and the more stressed he got the more he needed a cigarette. Right now he would happily have smoked an entire packet without a second thought.
There were more sounds around him. Something was moving through water away to his left now and Dawson was beginning to wonder exactly how deep the bog was that he was clumping about in. Deep enough to drown a man? He swallowed hard as he visualised himself sinking lower into the mud, the foul sludge filling his lungs as it drew him into its depths. He shook his head as if to dispel the vision, almost managing a smile at his own overactive imagination.
The Geiger counter crackled loudly.
He looked at the needle on the Series 900 mini-monitor. It shot halfway across the perspex-covered screen and stayed there as the sounds from the machine grew louder. Dawson pushed the probe further ahead of him and the crackling grew louder.
He nodded to himself and pressed on, trying to ignore the filthy water that was seeping into his boots as it had been for the last hour or more. The quicker he found what he was looking for the quicker he would be able to get out of this fucking place. He could dry his boots and his uniform, put his feet up and have a cup of tea in pleasant warm surroundings rather than trekking about like an idiot through this stinking marsh.
There were more crackling sounds from the Geiger counter and as Dawson inspected the screen he saw that the needle had hit the maximum level and was staying there.
‘Got you,’ he murmured to himself, setting the device down on the ground beside him. He pulled the small shovel from his pack and drove it repeatedly into the ground, the constant noise from the counter an accompaniment to his digging. It took less than a minute before the shovel struck something that sounded metallic.
Dawson dropped to his knees, using his bare hands to scrape away the last of the soggy earth. Then he stood upright and raised both arms in the air triumphantly. He reached for the two-way radio clipped to his belt and pressed the transmit button. There was a hiss of static.
‘Object located,’ he said into the mouthpiece, his voice echoing through the night.
More static, then another voice.
‘Well, aren’t you a clever boy?’
The second voice cut through the blackness. It was one that Dawson recognised immediately. He slipped off his night-vision goggles as he saw the unmistakable figure of Sergeant Michael Coulson striding towards him, his own two-way clutched in his hand.
‘It’s only taken you an hour to find the fucking thing,’ Coulson said, peering down at the small metal cylinder that Dawson’s digging had uncovered. ‘I’d better ring the Guinness Book of Records.’
‘How did you find me so quickly?’ Dawson wanted to know.
‘I’ve been about fifty yards behind you ever since you left,’ Coulson told him.
‘I can’t see a thing out here, sarge,’ Dawson protested.
‘That’s why you’ve got night-vision goggles, you dozy bastard. Try using them.’
‘They give me a headache.’
‘Oh, diddums,’ Coulson said mockingly.
‘Why are we doing this, anyway? Yomping through shit on a moor in the middle of nowhere trying to find …’ Dawson paused. ‘What exactly are we trying to find again, sarge?’
‘Radioactive material,’ Coulson reminded him. ‘There’ve been reports that the Taliban might have got hold of some weapons-grade uranium and they intend to use it in dirty bombs out in Afghanistan. Where the fuck they got it no one knows but the last thing our boys need out there is to find out that they’ve placed some in an IED. This kind of exercise will help you when you get out there.’
‘Thanks for reminding me,’ Dawson said wearily.
‘When do you ship out?’
‘Four days.’
‘First tour?’
Dawson nodded.
‘You’ll be all right,’ Coulson insisted. ‘Just do as you’re told and keep your eyes open when the time comes.’ The two men looked at each other silently for a moment, then the NCO. spoke again. ‘Now, that thing needs to be buried again so one of your mates can find it,’ Coulson went on. ‘So move it. Get it buried and we’ll get you back to base.’
‘That’s very nice of you, sarge,’ Dawson said, grinning.
‘Don’t push it,’ Coulson told him, raising one eyebrow.
‘Is the whole platoon out here tonight?’ Dawson wanted to know.
‘No, just B Company. A and C company are out here tomorrow night. You should be grateful you pulled this shift – there’s thunderstorms forecast for tomorrow night.’
‘If this exercise is supposed to help us in Afghanistan then shouldn’t we be doing it in the same kind of conditions? Not fucking around in a swamp.’
‘Well, there aren’t too many deserts around here – in case you hadn’t noticed – so this kind of terrain will have to do for now.’ The NCO nodded towards the metal cylinder. ‘Now get that fucking thing buried again so the next silly sod can try and find it.’
‘Who’s next, then?’
‘Lansing,’ Coulson said. The sergeant looked around, then pointed to a slight incline about thirty yards ahead. ‘Stick it in there somewhere, that’ll do. When you’ve finished there’s a truck about five hundred yards over that way.’ He gestured to his right. ‘I’ll be waiting there. And don’t be too long – we haven’t got all night.’
Dawson nodded, listening to the sounds of the sergeant’s footfalls as he headed off across the sodden marshland. The private waited a moment. Then he set off towards the area of ground Coulson had indicated, carrying the small metal cylinder. The Geiger counter was clicking constantly now due to the proximity of the cylinder and Dawson was beginning to wonder exactly how much radioactive shit was inside it to trigger the detector. He decided that the quicker he buried the bloody thing the better. There was a broken stone wall running across the firmer ground and Dawson nodded to himself. Weeds and grass grew thickly around the base of the construction and, when the private pulled some of the vegetation away, a large centipede wriggled into view and scrambled away over one of his boots.
He set the cylinder down and began digging.
The Geiger counter crackled a little more loudly.
