They Came From the Allotment, Chapter One: Temporary Position

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Chapter one of a new five-part B-movie horror comic. It’s 1972, and a London temp is sent to a damp government research station in the Fens to type up the results of a fertiliser trial. The numbers can’t be right. Nobody will listen. And out in the allotment, something is growing.

A cream-and-green country bus drives away down a dead-straight Fen road, leaving Sheila alone on the grass verge with her suitcase and typewriter case.
The last bus doesn’t wait.

Sheila Dunn, temp, twenty-three, is dropped at the edge of nowhere.

Flat fields, one ditch, and a bus already shrinking into the grey.

Dr Pym in a tweed jacket shakes Sheila's hand outside a long prefab research hut while a young assistant in a lab coat watches.
“Splendid! You type, I suppose?”

Dr Pym runs the research station and is very pleased to see her.

He doesn’t ask her name until later.

Sheila types at a grey portable typewriter under harsh fluorescent light, a mug of tea beside a stack of papers.
Growth Trial Seven.

Her job is simple: type up the reports.

Weights, lengths, dates. All very boring, at first.

Sheila's hands hold a typed report beside a black-and-white photograph of a smiling man standing next to an enormous striped marrow.
That can’t be right.

The figures keep going up.

And there’s a photograph to prove it.

Seen from behind, Sheila stands at the rain-streaked hut window with her tea, looking out at a giant striped marrow under green netting.
It’s bigger than yesterday.

From the window she can see the prize specimen.

She’s fairly sure it was smaller this morning.

In the allotment Dr Pym pats the huge marrow proudly while his assistant measures it, and Sheila stands to one side holding a clipboard to her chest.
“Prize-winner, that.”

Dr Pym pats it like a favourite pony.

Nobody mentions the vines.

At red sunset Sheila stands alone at an empty roadside bus stop with her suitcase, checking her wristwatch, the research hut glowing across the fields behind her.
The last bus has gone.

She works late, and the timetable doesn’t care.

The only light for miles is the hut.

Sheila lies awake in a narrow iron bed under a tartan blanket in the dim hut while thick green vines slide past the dark window.
Something is dragging past the window.

She makes a bed of it in the hut.

Then something long and green goes past the glass, slowly.

Sheila stands in the open hut doorway at night with her raincoat round her shoulders, pointing a heavy torch out across foggy allotment rows.
Just the wind. Probably.

She takes the torch.

She tells herself it’s the wind.

Torchlight reveals a wide drag trail through the mud and flattened cabbages, leading to a ragged gap in the hedge as a thick tendril curls away into the dark.
It’s not in its bed any more.

The prize marrow’s bed is empty.

And the trail leads towards the village.

Listen: Bigger Than Yesterday on Suno

This chapter’s song is sung from Sheila’s side: stranded, ignored and quietly certain something is wrong. It’s a 1970s horrorwave take, with dark analogue synths, a creeping pulse and a deadpan female vocal. It’s catchy, and a bit wrong.

Bonus tracks: Growth Trial Seven on Suno and Growth Trial Seven (Night Reading) on Suno, two eerie instrumentals in the style of 1970s library music for foggy fields after dark. Best heard with the curtains shut.

Chapter two, “Overnight Growth”, arrives next Tuesday at 8pm UK time. Subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss it.

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