At a London house, The Potter family are fretting about the whereabouts of their daughter. The door opens and the daughter Nellie enters, crying out that she is not feeling too well. Nellie’s mother looks on in horror as she witnesses her daughter flicker rapidly in and out of existence…she has the flickers!
At the New Regency Theatre bar, Jago and Litefoot meet up. Jago complains that business has been bad recently thanks to a fairground in town that is showing off a new invention – the cinematograph. Jago is scathing of the technology, claiming that the appeal of films are nothing compared to a live act that he can provide at the theatre. A police officer arrives and informs Litefoot that Inspector Quick wants to see him at the police station.
At the mortuary, Litefoot is amazed at the new corpse brought into his mortuary, a body that is rapidly flickering in and out of existence before their very eyes and is rapidly becoming transparent! Inspector Quick identifies her as Nellie Potter. She returned home to her parent’s house one evening with the flickering affliction. The doctors were unable to treat her, and not long after she died. Litefoot suggests they retrace Nellie’s steps on the night she was afflicted with the flickering. Quick mentions that she was out on a date with her boyfriend, who just so happens to be a prime suspect and is in custody. He invites Litefoot to interview him. They turn back to look at Nellie’s body to discover…she has flickered out of existence entirely…
In the interrogation room, Litefoot and Quick interview Nellie’s boyfriend, Joshua Stark. The young man is nervous and confused after all the recent events. Stark explains that before Nellie’s death, they were at the fairground watching the new cinematograph exhibit. Talking of Nellie causes Stark to emotionally break down, so the investigators conclude the interview.
Outside the interrogation room, Quick is suspicious of Stark, but Litefoot mentions that he has no motive for murder. Litefoot decides that he and Jago will visit the fairground to investigate the new cinematograph for themselves.
At the fairground, Jago and Litefoot find the cinematograph exhibit run by an American showman called Robert W Paul. Jago is not impressed by the showman and remembers that he was once a illusionist. Paul invites the two men inside the tent, but Jago vehemently refuses after Paul jokingly states that a theatre can’t compare to his exhibition. Jago angrily drags Litefoot away.
Litefoot states that they should have looked at Paul’s exhibition as it may have something to do with the flickering girl, but Jago refuses. He spots another tent nearby which Litefoot notes has plenty of people leaving with a look of absolute terror on their faces – Old Ma Hambley’s House of Horrors. Jago suggests they have a look as it may be fun, but Litefoot counters that they get enough horror and scares in their day to day lives without needing to pay for it. They approach the tent and an haggish old lady, Ma Hambley, greets them and takes their entry fee. Just before they enter, a man leaves the tent screaming about the stuff he saw inside should not be allowed. Alas, Jago is not deterred as he believes it all to be a trick. Hambley assures him there are no tricks here. She opens the tent and leads the duo inside.
Inside the House of Horrors, Jago and Litefoot note the tent is pitch black and a light begins to flicker inside. The light begins to flicker faster and faster. Litefoot suddenly sees something in the darkness but it quickly disappears. Then Jago sees a figure in the darkness which too disappears as quickly as it appeared. Litefoot describes a tall, slim figure with a blank expression pointing at them. Jago too describes the very same thing. The figure materialises before them looking straight at them, flickering in and out of existence. The figure begins to walk towards them, at which point Jago suggests they leave quickly…
The investigators exit the tent to find Ma Hambley laughing at them. Jago and Litefoot are more impressed than frightened and Jago asks her, as a fellow professional theatrical, to show him how the spooky effects are performed, with Litefoot offering to pay. Hambley obliges and leads them back inside the tent…
Later at the Red Tavern, Jago and Litefoot tell Ellie about their trip to the fair, particularly about Ma Hambley’s House of Horrors. They explain that when Hambley showed them inside, there was only a light and no apparatus that gave the illusion that someone was in the room with them. Which, despite their impressed demeanour, gravely unnerved them. They describe the flickering figure that they believed was in the room with them. Ellie gasps in horror at the description of the figure…she explains that from when she was a child, there was a urban myth about a creature called the Flickerman who would snatch naughty children. She recites a rhyme:
The Flickerman will have his toll
So naughty boys and girls beware
He’ll steal away your very soul
And leave you neither here nor there…
Ellie never took any notice of the tale…until one day, a boy called Sam disappeared and Ellie’s friend Pete swore he saw the Flickerman snatch the boy away. Nobody took any notice and chalked it up to imagination, but Pete was terrified witless. Litefoot asks Ellie if she can take him and Jago to meet with Pete and ask about what he saw, to which she agrees to do the next evening. After they visit, Litefoot plans to revisit the fairground…maybe the Flickerman is not as mythical as Ellie thinks…
Later that night, Ellie is confronted by Ravener outside the Red Tavern. He demands to know Ellie’s progress in killing Jago and Litefoot is progressing. Ellie explains that she plans to kill them both tomorrow evening at the fairground…
The next evening, Jago, Litefoot and Ellie are at Pete Stepney’s house. They ask him to recount every detail he can describe and not leave out anything, no matter how strange it may be. Pete recalls the fateful night…
One night, he and Sam played hide and seek in an old warehouse. Pete was hiding behind some old crates, but Sam never found him. After considerable time had passed, Pete left his hiding spot to look for Sam. He found Sam by the river, crouched down looking at a flickering Gaslamp. In the light of the lamp, Pete and Sam saw the Flickerman materialise in front of them. Pete was petrified by the sight and urged Sam to get away from it, but Sam was intrigued and moved closer to the faceless Flickerman. The Flickerman noticed Sam approach and held its hand out to Sam and he held his hand in turn. When their hands touched, Sam began to flicker rapidly before he flickered out of existence altogether, all before a terrified Pete. Pete ran to get help from his father, but when they had returned, all trace of Sam or the Flickerman had disappeared…
Litefoot asks Pete where the entire ordeal took place. Pete replies that it all took place at Bethnal Park. Litefoot realises that this is the same place where the fairground is currently located. The Flickerman is at the Fairground and is living inside Ma Hambley’s House of Horrors…
Jago, Litefoot and Ellie arrive at the fairground and head straight for the House of Horrors. Despite Jago and Litefoot’s warnings, Ellie bravely enters the tent first into the darkness followed by the Infernal Investigators.
Once inside, a skeleton on a wire comes screeching at them before falling harmlessly to the floor. While Jago and Litefoot are rather shocked, Ellie isn’t impressed. Suddenly, Robert W Paul from the cinematograph exhibit enters the tent laughing at his little trick. He reveals that he had recorded the entire trick on his new camera and plans to show it off at his exhibit. Jago is furious while Litefoot calmly suggests that they all leave.
After their embarrassment at the hands of Paul and no sighting of the Flickerman, Jago and Litefoot prepare to leave. They notice Ellie standing nearby muttering to herself about she can’t do it. They talk and assume that she is thinking about the recent events have brought back bad memories. Litefoot decides that they should give Ellie space to herself and they leave her to collect her thoughts. Once they leave, Ellie is approached by a drunken man called Davey who tries to chat her up, Ellie invites Davey behind the bushes…and she bares her vampiric fangs and kills him…
The next day at the Red Tavern, Jago is fearful that Paul will release the recording of him and Litefoot screaming at the sight of the skeleton. Litefoot tells him that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but Jago can’t seem to find the joke funny if it’s at his own expense. He begins to think that maybe he imagined the Flickerman in the tent, but Litefoot states that he saw it too. Plus Ellie and Pete’s descriptions match what they saw…the Flickerman is no imaginary being and Litefoot resolves to find it by visiting the street where Sam disappeared all those years ago.
Jago and Litefoot walk along the street where Sam was abducted. They pass by a large warehouse building with no windows. They ask a local loiterer about the building, who tells them it is the entrance to an abandoned tunnel that was under construction 40 years ago. The tunnel construction was abandoned because of something that was discovered down there, something that frightened the workers. With a new lead in the case, Litefoot decides they should travel down the tunnel to investigate, much to Jago’s reluctance.
Inside the tunnel, it does not take long for the Infernal Investigators to come face to face with a flickering figure in the darkness – The Flickerman! Jago corrects him as more faceless figures emerge from the darkness, a whole race of Flickermen! The Flickermen turn to face the investigators and move slowly towards them. Overcome with fright, both men run back towards the tunnel entrance.
At the Red Tavern, Jago is downing glass after glass of brandy to try and calm himself. Litefoot ponders where the Flickermen come from. He assumes that the tunnel is not their base, but a place where they are entering from their own universe. The digging of the tunnel allowed a portal to materialise from the Flickermen’s universe. Plus, the fact that sightings of the Flickermen seem to be focussed around Bethnal Park suggests that they cannot move far from their point of entry, which would make dealing with their invasion much easier. The Red Tavern door bursts open and Robert W Paul enters, much to Jago’s dismay. He approaches the Infernal Investigators and panickily asks them to come with him to the fairground. He has something he needs them to see…
At Paul’s cinematograph exhibit, he plays back the recording he made of Jago, Litefoot and Ellie in the House of Horrors being scared by the pretend skeleton he planted. As the film plays out, it shows the trio suddenly being surrounded by Flickermen all looking directly at the camera and walking towards it! But the question is…how did they remain unseen at the time?
Litefoot deduces the Flickermen now come from another dimension where their physical laws differ from the regular universe, which could explain their disappearing tricks. Litefoot asks Paul to explain the process of how a film is recorded. Paul explains that his process requires his camera to take several photographs a second, mere milliseconds apart so when it is played back, it looks as if the subjects in the film are moving in real time. With the camera technique explained, Litefoot deduces that the Flickermen can only exist in the regular universe for 1/16th of a second at a time, then they flicker out of existence again before flickering back in, giving them their flickering appearance. As Paul’s cinematograph can record a film at 1/16th of a second, it can record them solidly. Whereas a human eye can perceive the universe much faster than a camera, so the Flickermen can appear almost invisible to the naked eye.
The Investigators watch the film again and watch to their surprise that the Flickermen change positions every time the film is played! This can only mean that the Flickermen were not only recorded…they have been captured on the film’s cellulose! Inspector Quick enters the tent and informs the investigators that his subordinate made a rather shocking discovery about Sam’s disappearance all those years ago…Samuel Hambley…Sam Hambley is the son of Old Ma Hambley, the proprietor of the House of Horrors!
At the police station, Quick and the Infernal Investigators are interrogating Ma Hambley (or Eunice Margaret Hambley as she introduces herself). Litefoot simply asks about her son Sam, but Hambley tries to feign ignorance, but Litefoot presses her with his birthday and the date of his disappearance. Hambley breaks down realising that they will not be fooled and decides to tell them everything.
Hambley recalls being in a pub with her husband when Pete Stepney rushed in telling them that the Flickerman had kidnapped Sam. She followed Pete to the place where the abduction occurred and could not find anything. While everybody else believed Pete to have killed Sam, Hambley thought otherwise and believed Sam’s tale of the Flickermen. She returned to the same spot every night until one night she saw Sam once more…surrounded by Flickermen, begging for help. She theorised that if the Flickermen can take people and turn them into their own race, there’s a chance they can return back to human form. For several years, she studied the Flickermen intently and deduced that they never ventured far away from the abandoned tunnel or Bethnal Park, and they were drawn to light. With this knowledge, Hambley set up a House of Horrors on the fairground with the flickering lights to draw in the creatures in hopes of striking a deal with them. If she can sacrifice enough souls to the Flickermen, they can return Sam to her.
Having heard enough, Quick promptly places Hambley under arrest and leads her away to the cells. Litefoot sadly reflects on Hambley’s desire to see her son again, but assumes that those who have been captured by the Flickermen are beyond saving. Jago mentions that at least now they can stop the Flickermen from capturing more people…even if it means having to venture into their tunnel again…
In the abandoned tunnel, Jago, Litefoot and Paul journey towards the Flickermen. Paul is lugging his camera with him. They eventually encounter a flickering mist in the tunnel. Through the mist, they see a strange alien landscape, the Flickermen’s home dimension! They see several Flickermen on one side of the portal in the alien dimension, and the other Flickermen simply hovering around the mist looking back into it. Litefoot deduces that the Flickermen in this world are trapped here and are simply trying to get back, which would explain why they do not stray far away. While they cannot reopen the portal to send them back home, the investigators can easily make them a new home to live in without inadvertently hurting anyone else. So Litefoot instructs Paul to set up his camera to capture them all on the film before they notice. Trouble arises when Paul cannot seem to find his screwdriver to replace the film, plus the Flickermen have noticed their presence and are advancing on them! Litefoot finds Paul’s screwdriver just in time for him to open his camera and start recording. Paul matches the camera’s speed to 1/16th of a second and the Flickermen begin to show up in the recording. Eventually, the Flickermen flicker out of existence. Paul looks through his camera and sees the Flickermen looking around aimlessly. They have a new home on a roll of film…Litefoot instructs him to handle it carefully…
At the fairground, Jago and Litefoot thank Paul for helping them in their battle with the Flickermen. Paul offers the two men to be his guests of honour when he premieres his trick film, plus he will explain that they were merely two actors. But Litefoot dissuades him from doing so as it will still be crawling with Flickermen. Strangely enough though, Paul explains that the Flickermen from that film have disappeared! They must have been captured on the other film they recorded in the tunnel! In which case, the Infernal Investigators agree to do so, and Jago offers to hold the premiere at the New Regency Theatre. Litefoot believes that the aliens did not have any truly malicious intent and hopes that the people they captured were a mere side effect of their alien nature. They bid Paul goodbye, but not before bumping into a suspiciously pale man. The man states he was merely observing. Thinking nothing of it, Jago and Litefoot head for the Red Tavern to celebrate.
Deep underground, Ravener reports to The Old One that Ellie did not follow through with her plan to kill Jago and Litefoot as he saw them still alive at the fairground. Ravener further reports that he kept a close watch on Jago and Litefoot during their Flickermen investigation and suggests that they tread carefully as they are more intelligent and dangerous than they appear to be. The Old One is pleased that the Infernal Investigators have dispatched of the Flickermen, even more so than the time they defeated his old enemies, the Draxus. Heeding Ravener’s warning, The Old One states that the two investigators could become a threat to him and his kin. If Ellie can’t kill them, then he will command his vampires to kill them both…
