FROM WITHIN, J D THORSEN [that summer book txt] 📗

FROM WITHIN
October 11: 1994
Tyndrum, Argyle and Bute:

It was a particularly frightening thunderstorm that night, we, well, when I say we, I mean Tommy, my brother, Sara, his girlfriend and myself.
It was an amazing lightshow that Mother Nature was putting on. We were in the The Clachan Hotel, just off of the main road between Glasgow and Inverness, the A82. The storm had been raging for more than three hours, and it sounded as if it was passing, with the sound of thunder becoming more distant.
I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. It was dusk, and as I looked to the North, and behind the trees, I saw a light which I first assumed was the now far off lightning. Upon looking again, however, I found this light to be very strange, and amber in colour. I stood observing this for around ten or fifteen minutes before Tommy joined me. He inquired as to whether I was alright.
“Hey William. You look quite bemused. What’s up?”
“Look at that! Have you ever seen anything like that before?”
“Not at this time of day” Came the answer.
“Maybe it’s just the sun setting...”
There was a sudden flash of lightning, and a rumble of thunder echoed back up the glen, as the rains began again. We decided that we would go back into the hotel.
Later that evening, perhaps a little after ten, we were heading back for home. On the way, there was a huge flash of lightning, but this was not normal lightning, it was strange, unlike any other I had ever seen. As we approached the house, there was an almighty bang. Like an earthquake, the ground shook. People in the nearby houses switched on their lights and came out, looking around for any damage, but could see none. There was, however, an overpowering smell of sulphur present.
Tommy and I looked at each other. He decided that maybe it would be good if we explored, so he entered the house, and returned shortly after, carrying two flashlights. Sara also had a flashlight. She told us to wait,
“Maybe we should grab a few provisions” she suggested.
By the time we left with our walking boots, backpacks and flashlights in hand, it was almost midnight. We went through the village, but could find no trace of any damage, but we looked north, over towards where I had seen the bizarre amber light just a few hours before, and there seemed to be a new light.
This one was a pale powder blue colour, which was pulsing. We found it intriguing, as it was emanating from the direction of the Bridge of Orchy, so we took to the West Highland Way path. Seven miles to Bridge of Orchy, and so we started off.
12th October: early hours, bridge of Orchy:

This is not would you would call a large village, but it was a village nonetheless, with just five or six houses, a small train station, a small post office immediately next to someone’s home and, of course, the Bridge Of Orchy Hotel, which sits on the shoulder of the A82.
What guests were there were out investigating the strange blue light. Evidently, they had seen it too. When we met a few of these guests outside the hotel, one of them was an American. He seemed quite excited.
“Man, did you hear that explosion?” he asked.
There was a secondary explosion, like a ball of fire. We all looked at each other. It was then that I remembered that there was another hotel at the other side of the hill, at Inveroran. I was worried for the people staying there, so all of us ran a kind of rescue mission over the hill and towards the hotel.
When we got to the top of the hill, we were shocked and bemused, for all was still, and the hotel was perfectly fine, as if nothing had happened. Still we approached the hotel in order to make sure.
We knocked on the door. There was no answer. Calvin, the American man, sprinted around to the back of the hotel. He returned to us, his face as white as chalk.
“We gotta get the hell outta here... Now”
Tommy was eager to investigate further. Calvin, however, was adamant that he wanted out of there. Tommy was ready to go around.
“No no, Tom, we gotta go... we gotta go right now!!!”
Just then, we saw strange lights approaching. Three strong lights. As we were making our way back up the hill, we heard the sound of rotors, and approaching traffic. We decided to jump behind some large rocks in order to hide, making sure that the hotel was still in plain view for us.
We watched the helicopters land, and the cars arrived.
The military.
That is when we decided to turn back and head home.

Two Days Later:

Wednesday was a very good day weather-wise. We took a walk up to Ben Lui. The view from the summit was rather spectacular, and also, we had a birds-eye view of Loch Tulla. What was also interesting is that no perimeter had been set up by the military. There was no cordons, no soldiers, no nothing. The weather had started to turn, so we began our descent back down the mountain.
We got back to Tyndrum at about six o’clock. Just in time for a dram, after a long day’s hiking, but there was a different subject on the table for debate by the time we had arrived. Just as we began talking, there was a huge crash of lightning, and a soul-shuddering roar of thunder. The lights in the bar flickered on and off, and then suddenly stopped. The man behind the bar was standing there shaking his head.
“Here we go again...” he said.
Above the ensuing discussion, the thunderstorm outside seemed to be raging on forever. Just as what had happened a few nights before, there was a near deafening explosion. Again the ground violently shook. Just like last time, everyone exited their homes to see what had happened, the only difference being that the explosion had occurred considerably earlier than it had the last time.
This time we took the car and drove, as we knew it would be faster. We reached the Bridge of Orchy, hoping that we would come across Calvin, but we were told that he had left the hotel during the thunderstorm.
All of a sudden, there came another explosion, and an object shot straight up, high into the air, and sped away a few miles in a westward direction. It stopped, hovered for a moment, and bulleted straight up again, this time disappearing as it climbed.
We got to the hotel at Inveroran, but we saw no sign of Calvin.
Police officers and media arrived. The police advised us to vacate the area, and it seemed like the media were doing live reports from the scene. We rushed back to our hotel at Tyndrum, hoping to catch a glimpse of the news reports.
One of the news broadcasts was speaking of large explosions in Scotland, with one man missing. They passed it over to reporter Derek Shawcroft, who was on the scene.
“It happened here at around 6:35pm. During a thunderstorm, there was a massive explosion near this hotel, just behind me, but there are no industrial buildings that may have been the cause, and the area is heavily wooded. The whole situation is somewhat mysterious. It has also been reported that some people witnessed what looked like a strange, brightly coloured light which shot up into the air, moved west and disappeared into the sky at high speed, immediately following the explosion.”
The man in the studio asked
“And what of the missing man?”
“Yes! This man is thought to be from the United States. He was staying in the area at the time of the incident. There has been no sign of him since, although police and mountain rescue teams are searching for any sign of him. As of yet, there has been no word. Derek Shawcroft in Inveroran, back to the studio.....”
His voice tailed off, I had long since stopped listening by this time. I was too busy worrying about what had happened to Calvin, or where he could have got to.


Saturday, October 17th: 3 days later
There is talk in the village. They say that a young man had been found in Ardlui. He was airlifted to Belford Hospital in Fort William, where many blood-tests were ran, but nothing abnormal was found. He was released later the same day, and was allowed to return to his hotel in the Bridge of Orchy. That was about all the information that we were able to gather from the locals.
We made our way to the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, in the hopes of catching up with Calvin and conversing with him over a beer. He was grey and gaunt looking.
“Calvin, you look really ill, maybe you should have stayed in hospital”
“I’m fine, just very tired.”
“Is this anything to do with what you saw at the lodge, Calvin?” Tommy piped up.
All at once, an almost instant mist of trepidation descended upon Calvin’s shoulders. He looked at us over the head of his pint, let out a deep sigh, and spoke...
“I’ll tell you guys later. I really gotta rest now, coz my head feels as if it’s gonna explode...”
We nodded in silent agreement; maybe he would tell us when he was feeling a little better.

We decided a short while later that we would leave Calvin alone, so that he could go up to his room and get some sleep. From here on in, things started to become very strange.
The next day, we heard that Calvin had been found in such a state, that the people who found him believed he was close to death. He was rushed immediately back into hospital.

This next part is derived from Calvin’s hospital records:
Patient file: C. Allen: Sunday, October 24th, 1994:
Patient’s weight had plummeted. His head had begun to take an abnormal shape. His skin had lost all natural colourisation, and his eyes were almost permanently in a state of dilation. His behaviour has become more worrying and erratic. Apparently, a nurse had walked into his room to check on him, and had fled in terror. It was clear that Calvin was no longer what medical experts would class as “normal”, he has instead become, as suggested by some scientists within the field, an EBE. An Extra-terrestrial Biological Entity...

The military were informed immediately, and the hospital was advised to take all precautions, and quarantine the “creature”. It was, however, all to no avail, because said “creature” had managed to escape.
It was, perhaps, 36 hours later, that Calvin’s nurse had reported to her superiors that she was feeling unwell. Her colleagues had noticed that she was rather gaunt, and grey in appearance, which is scarily reminiscent of the symptoms Calvin had encountered when we met him at his hotel.

Nb: it is common belief that rats started the Black Death. In truth, the rat s were merely hosts to the symbiotic creature which did spread the virus. It has become clear Whatever Calvin had encountered behind the forest lodge had chosen to use him as a vessel to achieve their own ends.


Sometime later:
Scotland has come under threat from an unpredictable and dangerous epidemic. More and more cases of this “alien” virus have been reported throughout the country. Seemingly,