No Man's Land

The walk to the mansion is punctuated by rapid-fire series of nightmarish images illuminated by lightning blasts and then wiped out by black sheets of rain. Patches of fog cling to the mounds and well up from sinkholes and craters, resembling old shell holes and trenchworks.


Rusted, yet still sharp, barbed wire left over from the Great War twists across one stretch of hill.

Richard Pimms, clutching his bag tightly, tries to focus solely on making his way down the drive to the mansion, however he cannot turn his head away as the lightning illuminates another hellish scene, burning the images onto his retinas like a photograph. His work during the War, hundreds of miles away back in Blighty, couldn't have prepared him for this, and he starts to feel a little queasy.

For Richard, The Great War was largely senseless, those in command acted with absolute disregard of the men they were sending to their deaths. Undoubtedly a lot went on underneath the fighting, atrocities that may never come to light. It's astounding the lengths, and depths, that men will go to for victory, or power.


A sudden slide of earth from the side of a nearby ravine, provoked by the heavy rain that permeates everything, reveals a pile of dismembered skeletons, obviously a mass grave.

In the brief flash of lightening that illuminates the scene, the bodies look like they may be wearing the remnants of army uniforms, although you cannot tell which side of that war - the war to end all wars.

Kurt regards the war as an absolute disaster and a shocking waste – the royal houses of Europe get to use everyone else as their own personal chess set in a family dispute that nobody can make head nor tail of except that it involved Serbia in some way or other. And Austria. Germany's defeat in 1918, supposedly due to the mythical stab in the back, also seems to be one of the Nazis' pet grievances; the nursing of which seems to provide them with the justification for all sorts of vile behaviour. He had some good mates in the army, but most of them got killed.

Kurt doesn't like to be reminded of the war. It takes it's toll.

Roland's experience of the war came well after its end. As a variety of heroic commanders or young Lieutenants, all actually fighting under the bright sun of Hollywood. Roland is arrogant and removed enough to feel slightly disappointed at having missed out on the war to end all wars, and a real opportunity to distinguish himself as one of the dashing Americans helping to save the day.

He's a little shocked by some of what he sees. Real death has never been a part of his life, though at the same time there is a small thrill about finally experiencing the 'real world'.

Manny reacts with fascination to the sights around him. Like firelight flickering from a cave his eyes begin to shine. He has always believed in fate, fortune and the other superstitions of travelling people, but increasingly Manny has started to look for messages in everything. He looks for some fateful image to form in the fog and half expects the muddied skeletons to speak to him. He is wary, but only in the way he is always wary of his environment.

War, he has no experience of. He is used to the macabre from his upbringing with the freaks and fortune tellers of the circus. He understands death and killing - these are animal urges - but not the senseless slaughter of war. War - like industry or politics - belongs to the world of settled people and not to the circus, and Manny does not understand it. He was too young to really remember the great war and spent its duration in the south of Europe where people still had money for travelling shows. He knows that it changed everything, especially for his kind. People lost their faith in illusion and spectacle so that they no longer saw the point in taming a lion when it was easier to shoot with a machine gun.

A shift of the wind blows a sharp, chemical scent of pineapple and pepper their way; Those passengers with experience in the Great War experience recognise it as chlorine gas. If that fog contains traces of chlorine, leaving the path could be fatal. Perhaps there are old stores underground, seeping chemicals into the soil as the containers slowly rust.

Hal, although a 2nd Lieutenant during the Great War, never saw any front line action and so the walk to the mansion doesn't trigger any old memories. Nor does he recognise the acrid smell as anything dangerous. Still a little shaken up by his first encounter with a dead body most of the grisly scene is passing him by (something he will later regret as he tries to recall the scene to commit to paper).

The only consolation is that the way is easier than first thought; there is some sort of graveled road – pitted by ponds and split by runoff to be sure -- running in the direction the former bus passengers are traveling. A long, poorly maintained driveway that leads up to, or away from, the house.

Concentrating on his feet trudging through the mud and rain, Richard grimly makes his way forward, his body hunched against the rain and the nightmares that lie just off the path. Manny walks forward taking in the scene, fascinated but aghast, a mixture of kid in a sweet shop and nun in a brothel. Roland is pushing ahead, relishing the stormy weather and dramatic lighting, eager to see what comes next.

Kurt walks like when he was in one of the storm groups in the final offensive: Walking hunched up, trying to present as small a target as possible.

Thinking: Everybody else is bunched too close together. One burst from a machine gun ,or a well placed grenade, and they'll all be dog food. Need to watch out for hill crests and obstacles like walls and gates. We don't want to be silhouetted against the horizon.

All this going through him more or less unconsciously. He checks the luger in his pocket.

Just like riding a bike. You never forget.

Kurt tells everyone to spread out and keep low, his voice carrying over the thunder.

Also thinking – some of this lot don't look like they'll be able to go far. They're injured and/or wet plus a couple of them looked decidely shaky. The house is probably our best bet, people can rest up and maybe get dry. Although...I don't like the look of the place...not one bit.

Hal is still somewhat withdrawn at the moment. He is following the rest of the group, but is lagging a little behind, for fear of being engaged in conversation. He is not yet ready to "join in".

Despite being on this trip to seek out adventure, his unremarkable, but comfortable life has rendered him somewhat blind to the fact that the adventure has now truly begun. The crash and the walk to the mansion are little more than an inconvenience on his route to finding it.

About 150 yards from the house, the begraggled passengers are forced to pick their way across a line of barbed wire, tangled with logs and boards. This slows their progress and bunches them up together. Taking care, they are able to negotiate this obstacle with little difficulty, only slightly tearing some clothing, or picking up small scratches. It looks like the remains of a collapsed gate.

A lightning flash reveals a shattered wooden sign. It reads TVERODA KASILDA in stencilled, weather faded writing.

Hal, Kurt and Richard are able to translate this as reading 'Fort Kasilda' in the backwater dialect of these parts.

By this time, they are close enough to make out the details of the dark house, even against the stormy skies and driving rain.

Rather than the anticipated gothic pile that would be expected in these parts, the architecture of the house is high modernism, stark lines and sharp angles . It's exterior walls seem to be smooth, polished black stone. The house rises to around fourty feet tall, although judging by the arrangement of windows, it only seems to have three visible stories. At the top of the path, the house has enormous double doors of burnished heavy steel. There are currently no lights visible in the house.

Roland's amateur enthusiasm for architecture allows him to identify the house. It is the 'Black Chateau' the final masterpiece of the reknowned and brilliant modernist architect Adhemar Grau. Roland recalls that Grau, a fanatical Modernist and disciple of Le Corbusier, exhibited plans for the Chateau at various academic shows and conferences for several years, before he mysteriously disappeared seven years ago. The house was supposedly never built - but here it is.

"Say, I recognise that house. Any of you fella's interested in architecture?"

Roland turns to look at the other members of the party group. Richard looks puzzled for a moment, before turning to Roland.

"I'm more perplexed as to why that building was built here, I'm certain this site used to be a chemical weapons depot during The War."

"It was." says Hal "and a big one. Though I should imagine it was decommissioned years ago."

Hal looks suspiciously at the drifting clouds of acrid smelling mist

"Perhaps not as thoroughly as it deserved."

"In that case perhaps we should keep away from it? " suggests Kurt. "Alternatively, anyone got a canary?"

"Under normal circumstances I would be inclined to agree," says Hal, "but this wretched storm somewhat limits our options."

"However, things may not be as grim as they appear. These Balkan Johnnies may have desposed of the chemicals by simply burying them in the grounds. The building itself may offer shelter not just from the storm but also from the chemicals."

Despite his words, a small part of Hal, the part that remembers the plots from his own horror novels and the hundreds of horror stories he mined for inspiration, is quietly, but insistantly trying to make its concerns known. It is foolishness of course, Hal knows this and lends no credence to the idea that although the building may indeed offer shelter from the storm and the gas, something worse than either lurks within those imposing walls.

The first glimpse

Manny is the first to make it out of the ravine. The slope is muddy and steep, damaged by the bus's rapid, uncontrolled descent, but he climbs it with little apparent difficulty. Looking back into the ravine he can see that some of the passengers are still inside the bus, whilst others are apparently examining at the wreckage. At the top of the slope, Manny is alone for a moment.

Once out of the ravine and back onto the road. He is able to survey the surroundings through the rain, the flashes of lightening searing the scene across his vision. The only sign of shelter visible for miles around is a stark black mansion looming on a ridge overlooking the road, about half a mile away. Patches of fog cling to the mounds of the surrounding terrain, wellling up from sink holes and craters across his field of view. Manny had not seen the mansion from the bus before the crash. Perhaps it's dark colour kept it hidden behind the aged glass of the bus's windows.

Walking back to the nearest town they passed through, or ahead to wherever the bus was going, is a matter of thirty or fourty miles, injured, in the dark, over bad roads, in a thunderstorm.

Manny looks at the mansion with a sense of foreboding. He knows there should be something to fear from such buildings, and he knows he should ask himself why he didn't see the house from the road, but since the accident at the circus Manny doesn't trust his own senses and he has risked sleeping in enough strange places recently that the sinister aspect of the mansion does not deter him.

Manny searches the road for any sign of what the bus might have hit. It is made difficult by the rain, but there is no sign that the bus hit any kind of animal large enough to cause it to crash. There is no mangled corpse of a deer, or cow anywhere to be seen on the road.

In fact, the surrounding countryside seems devoid of the signs of animal life. There are no fences that would indicate farmland, nor any copses or woods nearby. The countryside looks blasted and barren, as if the damage left by the war - the explosions, the soliders, and the machines that rolled over this land - was never allowed to properly heal. The land is like a picked scab.

What is visible on the road are streaks of rubber where the driver must have tried in vain to apply the breaks. Manny also notices a number of gouges and scratches on the road surface, where something sharp and heavy has been dragged across it. Possibly several times. The scratches lead off in the direction of the ravine.

Manny shouts back down to the other passengers in the ravine.

"Hey, you people. There's a house up here... shelter."

Down in the ravine, close to the bus. Kurt hears Manny's shout and thinks "...And maybe that's where the people who made the bus crash live." He pats his coat pocket to make sure the Luger is still there.


Giving up on his investigation of the clearly unworkable coach Roland collects his bags and climbs up to the top of ravine. The bags weigh him down slightly, but he also makes the climb with little difficulty.

"Say, this is a pretty atmospheric looking place!"

He claps Manny on the back in a friendly gesture.

"Looks like maybe we're all gonna be traveling buddies for longer than we thought. Name's Roland, Roland Drew."

He turns away from the mansion across the fields and extends a hand to Manny. Manny shakes Roland's hand and says,

"Roland Drew? Just like the actor. We should head out of the storm."

Manny shouts down to the others that he intends to enter the house.

Richard, his examination of the coach generating more questions than answers, sighs and wearily trudges to retrieve his belongings. He looks bemused at the sight of the gentleman scribbling in a journal or some such, but puts it down to the stress of the situation. He spends a moment clambering in the back of the coach, trying to locate any objects that fell from his bag during the crash, before awkwardly climbing back out and into the ravine.

He stops before the slope, looking up at the two figures who have successfully climbed out of the ditch, then turns to the two men who remain in the ravine, raising his voice slightly so that he might be heard against the weather.

"Gentlemen, they say there's a mansion not far from here, we ought to get out of this ditch soon and make our way to shelter".

With that he starts to make his way up the embankment. The slope is muddy underfoot, and getting worse with the rainfall, yet Richard manages to keep a sure footing and push himself up towards the top of the ridge where he is able to join the waiting Roland and Manny. During his climb, he notices that most of the clothing he had re-stuffed into his bags from the floor of the bus is soaked and probably ruined. When he reaches the top. He too is presented with the sight of the dark mansion, about half a mile away across the blasted landscape.

Richard stops worrying about a ruined sweater as he sees the mansion looming oppressively in the distant darkness. He tries to shield his eyes from the driving rain in order to focus, a chill suddenly coursing through his bones as the lightning briefly illuminates the surroundings. "It's probably just the weather making it look so ghastly" he says to himself, although even he had to scoff at the weak attempt at self-deception.

A particularly icy cold droplet of rain drips down the back of his collar, causing him to shake his head and shiver, before he starts looking around the floor. Whilst picking up a mud-splattered dress shirt, he turns to the two men on the top of the slope.

"Say, Sirs, would you please help me fashion some sort of rope from these clothes? There are still folk down in the ditch, and that slope is getting more treacherous with every passing minute."

Hal's creative inspiration

Hal’s righteous indignation at the incompetence of the driver mounts as he moves towards the front of the bus and he is ready to begin shouting (speaking English very slowly and clearly so the foreign man can understand – as all foreign people understand English if spoken in this manner) when he realizes the poor man is beyond caring.

The sight of the driver’s body rocks Hal back on his heels. He jams he fist into his mouth to stifle a scream. Despite the gruesome sight Hal struggles to tear his eyes away, as fascinated as he is horrified. In his books Hal has described the aftermath of many a grisly murder but this is first time in the presence of a dead person.

A door that has been locked for many months eases open. Only the slightest of slight crack, enough for light from beyond to bleed into the darkness, enough for words to form in Hal’s mind, indistinct and almost random to begin with. Their vigour and meaning strengthen quickly until a virtual torrent of words are flowing and a beautifully crafted description of the scene emerges fully realized in the forefront of Hal’s mind.

The effect on Hal is more profound than the crash or even the sight of the near mutilated driver, from whom he can finally look away. A new purpose has gripped Hal with a ferocity that will tolerate no resistance. Nothing must stand in its way. Almost drunkenly Hal makes his way back towards the rear of the bus in search of that which has become most precious to him – his notebook. The words must be captured. They burn brightly, hypnotically in his mind’s eye, but even now Hal is aware of them beginning to dim.

Stranded in a ditch

Roland Drew stands outside the coach, the rain pouring down on him, and soaking through even his high quality outdoorswear. Off to his left, Richard Pimms is performing first aid on Manny in the skewed light from the bus's headlamps.

Roland crouches and examines the undercarriage. In the dim light, he can make out, among other things, a snapped and twisted axle. The bus is wrecked beyond any possibility of repair, leaving the passengers stranded, in the middle of the night, in the middle of howling thunderstorm, in the middle of nowhere.

Manny says to Richard, with an empty smile:

"There is always blood these days. Thank you for your kindness. My name is Emmanuel."

Manny considers the top of the ditch. He thinks back to childhood. They said he was no acrobat, too heavy set, Manny had never accepted that. It was more that the acrobats were a closed community in the circus and they would only train their own. So young Emmanuel had become a lion tamer instead, one man against the awesome force of the wild. Unless of course, there were greater things than even that... Manny shivers

"We should not stay here"

Richard, fingers fumbling in the cold rain to screw the lid back on the bottle of iodine, smiles to Emmanuel.

"A pleasure to meet you, Emmanuel, my name is Richard. Your head took a bit of a knock, but it's nothing too serious. Just let me know if you start feeling dizzy."

Having packed away the contents of the small first aid kit, Richard then looks up at the slope of the ditch and sighs.

"No, I doubt anybody would see us down here, best get back to the road."

From the door of the crashed coach, Kurt says to no-one in particular,

"The driver's had it. Anyone see what made him swerve like that?"

Richard points to the exposed undercarriage of the bus and says:

"I didn't see anything at the time but that spiked chain around the rear axle is the likely culprit."

There is a heavy spiked chain tangled around the broken axle of the bus, and two burst out tyres on the left hand side. It's hard to make out, but it looks like the chain may have been dragged down from the road with the bus, rather than something that was in the ditch with the rest of the rubbish and rubble. It would have been enough to cause the crash if it had been.

The Wrecked Coach

Disorientation and confusion reign for what seems like an age. The screech of tortured metal and passengers intermingle to become the cries of some monstrous communal entity.

The autobus came to a final jarring halt, listing badly to one side. Most of the windows were smashed in the crash, littering with passenger cabin with small shards. Hand luggage and personal possessions are scattered around from where bags burst open. Amongst the items now on the floor of the coach are a battered leather journal with the letter 'R' embossed on the cover, a bottle of good burbon (miraculously intact), a webley .38 revolver, and a 9mm luger.

The passengers ache all over. it was a painful, jarring collison, however, they managed to avoid the worst of it. They are battered and uncomfortable, with some small cuts from the glass, but managed to get a hold of a pole, brace themself against the back of the seat in front, or cover their head against falling debris.

Not everyone was so lucky.

The scruffily dressed fellow with the lop-sided mustache looks like he took a nasty knock to the back of his head. He reaches a hand to gingerly probe the area and it comes away glistening. He looks a little shaken and glassy eyed. Manny thinks "Why does everything keep happening to me? How can a man who used to ride bare back in a circus, and dance around clawing lions, have lost his agility? the others all seem fine." He pushes himself to his feet, and staggers around for a while, trying to wipe off the blood, and recover from his injuries.

Up at the front of the coach, the driver is slumped over the wheel. He isn't moving, and seems oddly contorted around the steering column. The door, off to his side, has broken open, and is now swinging freely in the wind.

It is still raining outside, and with the broken windows, some of which are pointing skyward, it is starting to get wet inside. The metal floor becoming slippery underfoot. The coach creaks ominously, and the small battery powered internal lights start to dim and fade. The only light comes from the one remaining working headlight, outside.

After being punched, kicked and pummelled by flying luggage Hal's first priority is to check he's OK. He's too shaken for his mind to form anything approaching a coherent question. Hal is battered and sore in a dozen places but none of his injuries are demanding immediate attention. Carefully, Hal climbs to his feet. In true British style Hal checks if any of his fellow passengers require assistance. Hal then checks on the driver, and if he's OK proceed to shout at him for being an incompetent, foreign idiot.

Roland takes a look outside, trying to figure out why the bus crashed. He can't see much of anything through the windows, as rain whips in from outside. He gets to his feet and heads to the door, it's a short drop down from the door to the muddy ground of the deep, steep sided, ditch in which the bus now rests, probably for perpituity. The bottom of the ditch is filled with all manner of rusting detritus and rubbish. The ravine is filling up with rainwater, and Roland's knowledge of the outdoors suggests that a flash flood can't be ruled out here. He turns back into the bus and shouts "Hey, is everyone ok?" before steping outside the bus.

Nearby, having extracted himself from the wreckage, Kurt and Hal are now both checking on the driver. Hal seems prepared to give the driver a stern ticking off, but Kurt checks for a pulse and finds nothing, his suspicions confirmed. The driver is clearly dead, his head now resting at an unnatural angle. He is far beyond the battlefield first aid that Kurt knows, but at least he probably died almost instantly in the crash. From this position, Kurt can see that the coach is resting in a steep ditch, but it is not readily apparent what actually caused the crash.

Richard blinks a few times and shakes his head, before asking the nearest passenger if they're ok. Well, he thinks that they're a passenger, in this dark it could be a bundle of luggage. Once on his feet, he helps the confused and shaken Manny towards the door. He looks like he could use a little medical attention. Thinking about the crash, the coach didn't seem to brake normally, but rather as if it had hit something, suddenly loosing control. Richard gives Manny a check over, using first aid in the light from the bus headlights. He checks that Manny's injuries aren't life threatening, and that he'll be fine given time. Head wounds always produce a lot of blood. It's mostly shock. Some of that bourbon he saw rolling about in the coach might not be a bad idea.

The Crash

Whether waking from unknowable dreams, engaging in mild conversation to pass the time through the dark, rainy night, or generally grumbling about the ineptitude of foreign railways, in various ways, the passengers settled down in the face of a long journey. Several keep themselves to themselves.

Suddenly, they are all thrown into the present moment by a sickening BANG from somewhere nearby. It reverberates through the cheap, wooden seating, and up through their spines, clashing teeth together. Richard drops his book in shock at the loud bang, eyes darting around the bus briefly before they find a support pole, his hands shooting desperately forward, grasping, as if trying to stop a wedding ring from rolling into a storm drain. The cigarette goes flying out of Kurt's hand. He thinks 'Oh Fuck' and - it's funny the things that go through your mind at times like this - 'why is that fellow reading a book in Russian?'.

The coach lurches sharply to the left. Up at the front the driver is struggling vainly with the steering wheel. He appears to loose control, and there is an almost slow motion careen off to the side.

The bus topples, at least one set of wheels leaving the road. Passengers are in danger of being sent flying if they cannot hold on, whilst luggage and hats are thrown across the inside of the coach. The small world of the bus, now frantic and full of shouts and banging, starts to invert...

In that short moment Richard Pimms thinks "I didn't go through the last few years just to die in a bus crash in the arse end of darkest Europe!" Emmanuel accepts the crash as another example of his current misfortune. Cloaked in a comfortable blanket of disbelief Hal watches the bus tip onto its side with detatched fascination. The blanket is whipped away when the side of the vehicle impacts with the ground and Hal is sent flying into a chaotic melee of tumbling bodies and luggage.

The autobus through the night

The poorly maintained and rickety bus jolts over a particularly vile stretch of road, waking the protagonists with a start and waking them from their dreams.

Kurt Steinhaur was dreaming of The war. Barbed wire and bullets. Never goes away.
Emaneul Faranc was dreaming about lions again, and he thought they spoke to him again.
Hal was dreaming of nothing. Hal's dreams have been timeless voids for months now.
Roland Drew was dreaming of "...And the Oscar nomination for Best Director goes to..." Middle-aged, distinguished Roland Drew, who has shaken up the film industry with his gritty series of films showing that reality is stranger than fiction, more visceral, more tangible than what came before. And all based on his own famous exploits..."
Richard Pimms was dreaming of flashes of light, the barely-audible whine of capacitors charging as photographers capture the grisly scene. Blood. Her body arranged just so. Skin like porcelain.

Fuddled by the long journey, nobody knew exactly where they were, and looking out the windows they see only darkness and sheets of torrential rain spreading against the murky glass.

A flash of lightning turns the night sky white, but reveals only muddy hills and gullies cutting the land like post-mortem mutilations of a corpse.

Looking around the bus, there are only a few other passengers, some of whom arerecogniseable from the small crowd at the railway station, listening to the conductors apologetic explanation that the train was not going to be running, and directing everybody, with a sinking feeling, down towards the replacement bus.

Things had a got too hot for Kurt in Berlin, he thought - "Punching out an SA troop leader in my local bar wasn't the smartest move I ever made. Still, I don't like Nazis, especially ones who spill my beer as they lurch the up to the counter bawling for service like they own the place. I figured I'd head east for a few weeks until the fuss had died down and the Brown shirts found someone else to get aggrieved about. It wouldn't take long. Two weeks should see me right. Lose myself on a tour of the Carpathians, visit a few castles, soak up some history."

Manny is running away from a disaster in the circus. He was a lion-tamer but his animal went bezerk and mauled the audience. He thought the lion spoke to him in human words before the attack, but he thinks he is going mad. He's trying to find his love - Anya - who is with another circus and avoid the fall out from the lion-attack

The back routes are cheaper. Ideal for the traveller on a budget, and a "magical mystery tour" holds more promise for excitement and inspiration. Hal is heading for Romania, specifically, the Transylvanian region - in the hopes of capturing the true feeling of the area before heading back to England to write some proper rip-off fiction.

t's time Roland Drew saw some real adventure. Those talentless sissies in Hollywood have no idea. The bridges being washed away is the perfect start, hopefully this is the beginning of something interesting at last!

Richard needs to get to Russia, he's poured through enough damn books, now's the time to pick up the trail.

It looks like most of the passengers from the station have already been dropped off somewhere along the way whilst they slept, at whatever village was their destination. Some of the remaining passengers look like they were also woken from slumber by the potholes in the road.

Kurt looks like the policeman he used to be A solidly built man in his thirties dressed in a dark suit, coat and hat. Manny looks like a tramp, there is little trace of the showman. He has a lop-sided moustache, unkempt hair and dark eyes blinking back out of deep sockets. Hal is an English gent. Average height, average build, slightly bookish, has a touch of the aristocrat about him. He wears clothes that are of high quality but are long past their best. Roland resembles Inspector Vernon in Nine to Nine, Umberto in Ex-Flame, Tony Vaughan in The Racketeer, Walter Goss in Fireman, Save My Child -Slicked back dark hair and the kind of clothes well to do people are sold for going 'outdoors'. Richard looks older than he ought to, his face scoured with worry lines, hair brushed in a side-parting almost as an afterthought, three days stubble growth on his chin.

At the front of the bus, the driver concentrates on keeping to the road. Now awake, Kurt lights up a cigarette. Manny looks out the window, trying to stare beyond the horizon. Hal takes out his notebook and after a few minutes of failing to jot down any ideas settles for doodling in the margins. Roland takes a look out of the windows, then strike up a conversation with the guy who looks like a cop. Richard gazes out the window, trying to establish where we might be, but soon gives up due to the driving rain and darkness, so pulls out a leather-bound book with a Russian title, and try to read in the dim light.

Kurt says to Roland: "Zigaretten?" and offers him a coffin nail.