The real gut punch, however, came right at the end of the interview, when Kim revealed that the events had taken place in Perivale, no more than a few streets away from where Dorothy had spent her early years.

As the programme finished and the credits started to roll, Dorothy sat back, her mind racing. Not only was the girl’s experience virtually identical to the nightmares that she had been having, but the fact that it happened in Perivale made it virtually a carbon copy of what had happened to her when she was 16 – scooped up in a time-storm from her old bedroom in 1987. At the time she’d naively thought that it had been the result of her juvenile meddling in chemistry, only much later learning it was the work of an ancient evil entity, Fenric.

Was the same thing somehow happening to other people? Her own experiences could’ve made her sensitive to these storms in time, whatever they were.

Why? she thought miserably. Why is it happening again?

CHAPTER TWO

Shutting off the TV, Dorothy made her way into the sitting room, dropped down onto the couch and flipped open the laptop that sat on the huge glass-topped coffee table that dominated the room.

Tucking her legs underneath her in an almost yoga-like pose, Dorothy placed her coffee on the table, slipped on her reading glasses and began to search for anything connected with reports of alien abductions in the West London area. The search parameters that she set were wide ranging, but her laptop was no ordinary PC, and the powerful software loaded onto it was capable of searching a far wider set of databases than was strictly legal – not just conspiracy websites and dark web forums, but police reports, military communications, government memos …

In less than 15 minutes she had managed to find at least a dozen instances of missing persons in the West London area and, whilst there was nothing that correlated with any official government reports indicating alien activity, each of them did match with accounts of strange ‘cracking’ sounds.

Five of them were in Perivale.

Dorothy knew that she really had little choice other than to investigate further.

That was going to upset a lot of people.

She closed the laptop and glanced at her watch. 5.30am.

‘Well,’ she murmured, taking off her glasses, ‘nothing like getting an early start.’

Uncurling herself from the sofa, Dorothy made her way back upstairs, took a brief shower and then changed into plain black leggings, a vest top and a thick, high-necked pullover. As she sat on the edge of the bed lacing up her boots, she glanced over at the badge-festooned jacket that hung on a stand against the far wall.

She paused for a moment, contemplating it. ‘Why do I even keep you?’ she said aloud.