The Colonel's Monograph Read online

  • THE VAMPIRE GENEVIEVE •

  by Kim Newman

  DRACHENFELS

  GENEVIEVE UNDEAD

  BEASTS IN VELVET

  SILVER NAILS

  THE WICKED AND THE DAMNED

  A portmanteau novel by Josh Reynolds, Phil Kelly and David Annandale

  MALEDICTIONS

  An anthology by various authors

  THE HOUSE OF NIGHT AND CHAIN

  A novel by David Annandale

  CASTLE OF BLOOD

  A novel by C L Werner

  THE COLONEL’S MONOGRAPH

  A novella by Graham McNeill

  INVOCATIONS

  An anthology by various authors

  PERDITION’S FLAME

  An audio drama by Alec Worley

  THE WAY OUT

  An audio drama by Rachel Harrison

  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Warhammer Horror

  The Colonel’s Monograph

  Notes

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘The House of Night and Chain’

  A Black Library Publication Imprint

  eBook license

  A dark bell tolls in the abyss.

  It echoes across cold and unforgiving worlds, mourning the fate of humanity. Terror has been unleashed, and every foul creature of the night haunts the shadows. There is naught but evil here. Alien monstrosities drift in tomblike vessels. Watching. Waiting. Ravenous. Baleful magicks whisper in gloom-shrouded forests, spectres scuttle across disquiet minds. From the depths of the void to the blood-soaked earth, diabolic horrors stalk the endless night to feast upon unworthy souls.

  Abandon hope. Do not trust to faith. Sacrifices burn on pyres of madness, rotting corpses stir in unquiet graves. Daemonic abominations leer with rictus grins and stare into the eyes of the accursed. And the Ruinous Gods, with indifference, look on.

  This is a time of reckoning, where every mortal soul is at the mercy of the things that lurk in the dark. This is the night eternal, the province of monsters and daemons. This is Warhammer Horror. None shall escape damnation.

  And so, the bell tolls on.

  My name is Teresina Sullo, and these will be my last words.

  This is not hyperbole, nor do I intend for you to read them as melodramatic, for I abhor exaggeration when more often than not, truth is drama enough.

  I am reclusive by choice, and in my long life have made only a very few close friends. Those generous souls I am fortunate enough to count as such, together with my late husband, would describe me as a venerable woman of quiet reflection, sober judgement and principled methodology. It can safely be said that I am a private person, not normally given to outpourings of emotion.

  I want you to hold to that as you read further.

  This record exists only so that no matter what slanders may be aired upon the occasion of my death, you will understand the truth of the matter.

  Though I suspect you will not thank me for that truth.

  I write by candlelight within the walls of the Cardophian Repository, which is to be found within Servadac Magna, the sector capital of Yervaunt. Presently, I sit at an ink-stained desk in the office of the Archivist Primaris, a position I was privileged to hold for three decades until my retirement.

  If you are unaware of the Cardophian Repository, allow me to briefly illuminate you. It is a venerable institution that has occupied its present site for the last four millennia, established in the last year of M36 to preserve the history of our world and its surrounding subsectors. Its grand structure is a much-lauded example of post-Akkadian Gothic, and boasts many fine collections of early Imperial histories, Ecclesiarchical art and, regrettably in light of current circumstances, an irreplaceable collection of pre-Apostasy illuminated manuscripts.

  But I digress – an inveterate habit of mine, which I must now attempt to curb as there is little time left to me, and I fear my resolve may falter if I delay overmuch. Thus, dear reader, with my bona fides and distaste for inflammatory rhetoric established, please believe me when I make the following statement:

  I encountered true evil at Grayloc Manor.

  To any who knew me, it ought to have come as no surprise that I accepted Garrett Grayloc’s invitation to catalogue his late mother’s collection of antiquarian books.1 I was, of course, familiar with the colonel’s patronage, what with her many donations, though I had only ever dealt with her factotum, and had never met the woman in person.

  Her beneficence had resulted in fevered speculation among my staff as to what other books and esoterica the colonel might keep, for her private collection was rumoured to be extensive and comprised of volumes of such antiquity that simply to touch them would result in their complete disintegration. I discouraged such talk, but my acceptance of her son’s request was driven in no small part by my own curiosity. You will, no doubt, be aware of the many idioms dedicated to the downfalls such sentiment inspires!

  Devotion to work has been my lodestar for as long as I can remember, a guiding light, set in the firmament of my being by the Emperor, blessed be His name. This devotion has weathered all that time and life has placed in my path, even the terrible events that later transpired at Grayloc Manor.

  It is this devotion that brings me back to the repository tonight.

  I had been gainfully employed by the Cardophian Reposi­tory in one capacity or another for over a century. Taken on as a scrivener’s inker at age thirteen, I diligently and methodically worked my way up through the archival hierarchies of academia – as vicious (if not as bloody) as any battlefield in the neighbouring Ocyllaria subsector – to reach the lofty rank of Archivist Primaris.

  Under my supervision, dedicated teams of archivists, lexicographers and data-miners shouldered the burden of a historio­graphical establishment of the means by which the great campaigns of Lord Militant General Hexior Padira III would be recorded. Twenty-six years after the completion of that work, our labours were rewarded with an honoured footnote in A History of the Later Imperial Crusades – a matter of considerable pride to all of us.

  In time, I would lead efforts to archive the sermons of Cardinal Saloma.2 This, in particular, was a thankless task, given the aged prelate’s penchant for never committing anything to paper or slate from that campaign, and the paucity of corroborating records following the humidity crisis of the Great Ingress.

  But, as had become increasingly clear to me over the decades, Imperial archiving is a task for the young and fortitudinous. My health had begun to suffer from many years of breathing in fixative particulates and preservative chemicals, and the surgeries effected upon my lungs were only partially successful in undoing the years of damage.

  And as debates about various methodologies of archiving continued to rage between the conservatory factions, it was decided by those with no appreciation for the importance of things like mass deacidification or print permanence that it was time for me to finally put aside my quill and hang up my frictionless proxy-gloves.

  With one hundred and thirty years of life behind me, and an unknown number ahead of me, I was retired from my post. I received full honours, and a statue with a passable resemblance to me was erected in one of the moderately traversed galleries. My husband thought it made me look severe, but I saw only devotion in the sculptor’s craft and was much taken with its likeness.

  Though I at first resented this enforced retirement, I quickly took to the more leisurely pace of life, and found time to read purely for pleasure, without the need for cross-checking, data-sorting and fastidious indexi
ng. The simple joy of a well-told story became my pleasure as I rediscovered the works of dramaturges like Philaken, Gorso and Shakespire.

  Though I was no longer employed by the repository, I nevertheless consulted with its archivists on a regular basis, for my expertise still had value. Many of this world’s nobility sought out my discerning eye to establish the veracity and value of their family’s heirlooms, Imperial Charters and genealogical writs.

  Retirement was treating me well until the day Teodoro died.

  I had recently returned from the long and tiring task of systemising the database of criminal records in the nearby port city of Hesarid. It had been a weeks-long endeavour that allowed for the proper cross-referencing of various evidentiary records and resulted in the perpetrators of seventy-six unsolved murders finally being brought to justice.

  The day after I returned to Servadac Magna, I said goodnight to Teodoro, and retired for the evening, leaving him reclining in his favourite chair by the window with his first edition of The Spheres of Longing.

  When I awoke the next morning, I was alone, and made my way downstairs to our parlour. There, I found him still sitting in his chair, with the book open on his lap. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I pulled a chair next to his and finished the verses he had been reading. I had loved my Teodoro from the moment I first met him, and now he was gone, I felt a yawning emptiness in my heart.

  The medicae later told me Teodoro had suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm, causing a subarachnoid haemorrhage that likely killed him before he even knew it was happening.

  He did not suffer, which is the only consolation I was able to take.

  The weeks following his death are grey and empty to me, as though the records of that time were consumed by waves of grief as caustic as the radioactive storms said to have erased the ancient library of NeoAleksandrya. I can recall little from that time save for the condolences and support of friends, which I am sure were welcome, but could do nothing to heal the void within my soul.

  Into this void arrived Garrett Grayloc’s petition in a monogrammed envelope of vellum embossed with his family crest; a Tetrarch Prince from a regicide set.

  The letter within was succinct, the handwriting ­uneven and alternating between left and right leaning, not the neatly kerned and leaded script of a scrivener servitor. I was impressed by the personal touch, even if the new master of Grayloc Manor wrote with a brusque tone that could be interpreted as somewhat condescending. At this time, I did not know if Garrett Grayloc had served in the Astra Militarum, but clearly a measure of the mother’s military mien had passed to the son.

  I have not the time to reproduce the full letter, but in summary, it requested I travel south to Vansen Falls and present myself at Grayloc Manor, where I would assist with the cataloguing of the late colonel’s library. Together with a generous fee, a groundcar would be placed at my disposal as well as whatever else might be necessary for the swift completion of the work.

  Like a drowning sailor clutching a lifeline as they sink for what they know will be the last time, I seized the opportunity. I wanted to lose myself in work, to devote myself to my craft so thoroughly that it would numb the grief I was feeling.

  I immediately drafted my acceptance.

  The following morning, a groundcar was waiting for me: a Kiehlen 580 from the previous century. I had travelled enough in my years to appreciate the comfort and craft of fine engineering, and this was just such a vehicle. The interior was deep red, of a soft leather that would make the seven-hour journey south to Vansen Falls far more tolerable.

  The driver was a brutish and, thankfully, mute servitor-chauffeur, which alleviated the need to engage in small talk, an activity I abhor and with which I have little skill. Spared the need to communicate, I opted to spend the journey reading what little information I had been able to gather concerning the late Colonel Grayloc and her family.

  But soon after leaving the outskirts of Servadac Magna proper, the landscape took on a curious quality I had not previously experienced, and I found myself unable to concentrate fully on my research. I had often travelled the environs of the city with Teodoro, and we had delighted in the untamed splendour of the landscape. Now it seemed altogether more desolate and threatening, as though nature were on the verge of reclaiming what humans had taken for themselves.

  Each time I returned to my reading, I was troubled by the feeling of an unwholesome gaze upon me, a sense of being appraised in an altogether predatory manner. In my youth, I was more often aware of this sensation, as are the majority of my sex, and though it had been some time since I had known such scrutiny, the feeling was instantly recognisable. In the end, I put aside my papers, and simply concentrated all my awareness on my surroundings.

  The ground grew steadily higher as the Kiehlen left the tamed flatlands of the interior and climbed towards the wilder coastal mountains. Farther out from the city, weed-choked ruins pressed close against the cracked and curving highway, while the encroaching forests pressed looming shadows over the glass of the groundcar’s windows. Red bracken and rust-gorse spread beyond the treeline like spilled blood, and the few agri-collectives I saw appeared singularly barren, with a uniform aspect of dilapidation clinging to the prefabbed dormitory blocks and silos within.

  When a rise in the road brought the mountains into view above the deep woods, my strange feeling of unease was only heightened. The slopes were too bleak and their summits too lofty, as though they had been deliberately raised to such heights as to keep their secrets hidden from all but the most determined seeker.

  Numerous gorges and ravines cut the landscape of our route, and the ancient iron bridges always seemed too rusted and neglected for my liking. The road dipped again, becoming a rockcrete causeway traversing a lightless stretch of mist-shrouded marshland to which I took an immediate and instinctive dislike. Frothed industrial scum lay upon the surface of the marsh, and I wondered what secrets might lie hidden beneath its brackish waters.

  At some point in this long crossing, the sway of the groundcar, coupled with the oppressive gloom of this stretch of the journey, lulled me into a fitful doze. I am a light sleeper at the best of times, and insomnia has been my constant companion since I entered my eleventh decade, but something in the uniform bleakness of these surroundings dragged me down into sleep. Whether it was the nagging thought of unwholesome things hidden beneath the marsh or my already heightened unease, I do not know, but the dream that bled into my consciousness was of a tenor I had rarely experienced before.

  I have no memory of sleep claiming me. One instant I was looking out over the marsh, the next I was deep in the dream. Even as I recall the details now, the fear still sets a cold hand in the pit of my stomach.

  It began slowly, almost pleasantly; a sensation of drifting downwards into darkness. This was not threatening, rather it was welcome, like drawing a favourite blanket tight on a cold night. Then the quality of the darkness shifted, and what was once comforting became threatening. Enclosing. Suffocating.

  …cloying wetness forced into my throat. Paralysing cold sliding over my limbs. Pinning me in place.

  …heavy weight pressed upon me. White linen

  fabric at my neck. Tightening. Choking.

  …a voice whispering in my ear. Obscenities.

  …icy fingers reaching into my

  chest. Closing upon my heart.

  …let me in…

  I woke with a start, slumped against the car door and ­unable to draw breath. I tried to speak, but the air was locked in my lungs. My heart raced. No words would come. Paralysis still held me in its grip.

  I could only stare at the burnished metallic curve of the servitor-chauffeur’s skull.

  Slowly it began to rotate on its spinal axis.

  I felt the desperate urge to flee, like an animal caught in a hunter’s snare.

  I could not bear to see the servitor’s face. I
knew it would be terrible. The ravaged features of a drowned man vomited back into the sunlight after years in the foetid darkness below. Its flesh would be like jelly, bloated and rank with decay, the eyes devoured by sightless things of the swamp in spite for their exile to the inky blackness below.

  But it was none of those things.

  It was Teodoro, smiling at me.

  ‘Let me in,’ he said.

  And then I awoke, truly awoke.

  Only with great difficulty was I able to control my breathing and reassure myself that I had not woken from one nightmare into another. Eventually, I convinced myself I was no longer dreaming, but for the hour it took to complete the crossing of the marsh, I kept my attention fixed on the groundcar’s interior. The leather texture of my seat, the gleam of chrome on a door handle, the throb of the powerful engine, the rumble of tires on the road.

  Anything to keep my gaze from wandering to the dreadful view beyond the glass.

  As the Kiehlen climbed back into the wooded hills, I allowed myself a measure of relief, but it was to be short-lived as the coastal mountains reared up so darkly and precipitously that they seemed ready to fall and crush me beneath their immensity.

  Clearly the dream in the marsh was still crawling within my skin!

  It had made me susceptible to dangerous leaps of imagination, so I took a series of deep breaths and recited my favourite catechisms from the Imperator Beneficio.

  The journey to Grayloc Manor was greatly unsettling me, but the comforting words of the Beneficio calmed me as they always do. As I have previously set down, I consider myself a rational woman, not given to flights of fancy, but this journey was filling my head with ill thoughts and dark imaginings.

  The road then passed into a sheer-sided valley, and the temperature within the Kiehlen dropped so sharply that, with great reluctance, I was forced to instruct the servitor-chauffeur to engage the vehicle’s thermal generator. Eventually, after an interminably long descent through the cold valley, the enclosing rock opened up and I beheld the dramatic vista of the western ocean spreading to the far horizon.