His round of the light room was cursory. On another night he might linger, enjoying the play of light on water, or even, on nights like this one, enjoying the sheer brutal force of the storm. But the chanting had got him spooked. While he was downstairs he was able to pass it off as a trick of the wind, but up here the chill he’d felt came back again.
Once more he headed for the stairs and safety.
The chant came in on a perfect beat between the period of the horn.
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
It was closer this time, a mixture of timbres and voices that echoed and thrummed through the whole fabric of the lighthouse. Jim’s legs wanted to run, but the sound was too close, too impossible.
Joe would want me to check.
He opened the door and stepped out onto the platform around the outside.
He immediately regretted it. The wind tugged at him, trying to throw him to the rocks below, and the rain drenched him. He sidled round, keeping his back to the glass all the way. The wind raged less wildly on the far side of the light, and the building itself protected him from the worst of the rain. Jim was able to shuffle closer to the rail and, hanging on tight, risked a look over.
Waves blasted at the rocks below, foam flying over the jetty that was usually twelve feet above the water line. Something was lying on the cobbles there, and for a moment Jim couldn’t breathe. The dark figure looked like a body, still and unmoving.
Then he saw the heads of the others bobbing in the water. A group of gray seals were swimming in the relative safety of the small harbor in front of the lighthouse. As he watched two more dragged themselves out onto the cobbles of the jetty.
They raised their heads and looked up, straight at Jim.
The chant came again.
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
Jim turned and ran.
He was back in the living quarters with a whisky bottle in his hand less than a minute later. But even through the thick oak door he could still hear the chanting. He turned the radio up full.
That’s better.
He poured himself a large measure and downed half of it in one gulp, letting the heat burn down to the pit of his stomach -- letting it remind him he was alive.
The words of the chant kept going round and round in his mind.
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
He fired up his laptop. His searches didn’t tell him much at first. He found the translation quickly enough.
Drop down dew ye heavens from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.
A search for The Just One proved less fruitful. Until he factored in their location. The article was the first thing returned.
"St Brennan’s Abbey is now little more than a ruin, but in its day it was the focus of one of the biggest religious trials in history. Twelve monks, long time residents of the island, were found guilty of heresy. They had renounced Christ and instead had turned to worshipping a being they said lived in the seas around the island, a being they called "The Just One".
The storm went up a notch. All the lights flickered and Jim’s heart jumped into his mouth. But the lights stayed on, as did the radio. He went back to the article.
"Found guilty, the monks were sentenced to be burned at the stake, but they escaped that fate when a great storm hit. The roof of the Abbey itself fell in. When the storm was over, the monks were nowhere to be found. But local legend says that they can be heard, in the wind, singing their prayers to their watery god. The identity of this god is subject to much conjecture but…"
The lights went out. Jim fumbled in the dark for several seconds. The wind howled, and through it, the chant rose, high and loud.
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
Peccavimus, et facti sumus tamquam immundus nos, et cecidimus quasi folium universi.
Something banged at the oak door, hard. He heard the old wood creak. An involuntary squirt of piss ran down his leg inside his trousers.
Move you idiot.
He’d just found the dresser, and the candles, when the backup generator kicked in. He heard the rumble of the diesel engine rise up from the cellar below him.
Sorry Joe. I’d forgotten all about that.
The radio switched back on suddenly, giving him near as big a fright as the chanting.
He stood there for a while, waiting for his heart to calm, letting the sound of forties’ big band swing seep into him. When he thought he could do it without dropping the glass he poured another whisky, draining it in one smooth gulp.
It was a long time before he felt even close to calm. He went back to the laptop, looking for answers, but the comms were down. He couldn’t even find the article he had been reading in the history.
He banged the table in frustration.
Something thumped on the door in reply.
Fuck off. Just fuck off!
He waited. There was no repeat of the banging on the door. Glenn Miller’s band kept swinging.
So what now?
Jim turned out the light and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He stepped slowly over to the small window by the door and looked out.
Twelve seals sat barely fifteen feet away, each as long as a man, and nearly twice as heavy. They all had their heads raised into the teeming rain, and all had their jaws wide open showing mouths full of yellow dog-like teeth. Even above the swing band he heard the chant rise up.
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
As he turned away from the window, he spotted something else he had forgotten. A small box was nailed to the wall beside the door. Inside lay a flare gun, and two flares.
His hands shook as he loaded the first.
He took a deep breath and opened the door.
"Fuck off," he shouted. "Just fuck off."
Even as he raised the flare gun the seal he had aimed at swelled and grew. It rose up, tall as a man. Its body morphed until it looked like a large hefty robed figure, a cowl covering its head.
Jim pulled the trigger and the flare hissed through the rain and embedded itself in the shadows where the face would have been. The flare blazed, orange and yellow that stayed behind his eyelids when he blinked. The figure fell away, burning, into the rough water below the jetty. Jim slammed the door shut and headed for the whisky, emptying the best part of the bottle before stopping, breathless.
He moved to switch the light on, then realized he could see quite clearly. A shimmering blue glow filled the window.
It’s coming from out on the jetty.
He couldn’t help himself. He went back to the window and looked out.
They were no longer seals. They stood tall in two ranks, one of six, one of five, on either side of the jetty. The shimmering blue light rose from the thing that was hauling itself out of the sea.
It looked like nothing less than a bloated white maggot, but a maggot that was nearly thirty feet long. The blue light came from a vast maw that gaped and pulsed as it drew itself up the jetty.
Jim fumbled with another flare and took three tries before he got it loaded.
The chanting outside rose again, loud enough to drown out the radio.
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
He threw the door open again.
"I told you already. Fuck off."
He fired the flare straight at the pulsing mouth of the maggot.
The mouth opened wide and the flare disappeared inside, immediately snuffed out.
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
Peccavimus, et facti sumus tamquam immundus nos, et cecidimus quasi folium universi.
Jim was suddenly struck immobile. He wanted to turn and run, to slam the door behind him and look for more booze. But the blue light surrounded him and held him as tight as if he’d been chained.
His legs started to obey someone else’s orders. He stepped out into the storm.
The chanting immediately got louder and more urgent. He transla
ted it in his mind, even as his throat started to articulate the sounds.
Drop down dew ye heavens from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.
As he stood finally in front of the maggot, legs starting to melt and fuse, teeth growing in a mouth that was suddenly too small, he knew.
One of the twelve had been taken.
A replacement was needed.
It is only just.
~-oO0Oo-~
If you liked these stories, you may like my Scottish fantasy in THE CHRONICLES OF AUGUSTUS SETON, out now at your regional Kindle store, or find out more on my home page at
http://www.williammeikle.com
Over the years I've written many stories set in my native country, in particular in the Watchers series. That series was written ten years ago now, and ever since I've been itching to write some more historical fantasy set in Scotland.
I've toyed with several ideas, but it was only last year that things started to firm up. It took the death of two of my favorite writers to give me a kick. David Gemmell's muscular swordplay and Robert Holdstock's grip on mythic archetypes and the importance of history mixed in my head and gave me a sword-for-hire in 16th Century Scotland.
The late 1590s were a time of turmoil. Scotland was on the verge of many changes that would shape its future, from religious reformation, to the union of the crowns with England. But in many ways the country was still rooted in its medieval past, and fear of witches and demons was still a large part of everyday life. Seton confronts demons, both internal and external, as he wanders on the fringes of history.
Robert Howard has covered similar ground with Solomon Kane, but I wanted Augustus Seton to be more of a pragmatist, a man set on his path through having succumbed to his baser desires, and now forced to pay the penalty. Seton's antecedents are characters from my teenage reading: the aforementioned Kane, Moorcock's Elric and Corum, and, possibly the main one, Gemmell's Jon Shannow, the Jerusalem Man, forever seeking personal redemption.
I also want Seton to be a seeker after truth, continually trying to find ways to explain the supernatural events that shaped him. This will lead him down many Fortean alleys, confronting demons and witches, but also getting involved in other manifestations of the weird, from the Grey Man of Ben MacDui, to the Kilbirnie Wyrm and even encounters with the Grim Reaper himself. Which brings me to more of Seton's antecedents - occult detectives, like Carnacki and John Silence, through to Karl Kolchak. Like these others, Seton, as he gets more experienced in the ways of the Dark Side, finds that the weird seems to seek him out for personal attention. This gives me a chance to mix history with fantasy, playing with the wide variety of tales in Scottish Folklore, and making up some of my own.
My goal here is to attempt to blend fact and fancy such that the reader can't be sure if they are dealing with myth or history, folklore or things plucked from my mind. And yet again, there are antecedents from which I've drawn. Scotland has produced several writers willing to weave the country's history and magic into their stories, from Stevenson's Kidnapped, Walter Scott's romantic fancies, and John Buchan's taut thrillers. Stevenson in particular manages to provide fast paced entertainment that also educates even as you're carried along by the sheer page-turning brilliance of his plotting and the solidity and truth of his characterisations. That's what I'm striving for with Seton.
He's still a character in development. The four stories in this collection are his first adventures in what I hope will become a long and wild career of monster smiting, demon slaying and general mayhem with a bit of history thrown in.
I hope you have half as much fun reading them as I had writing them.
Appearances
- The Chronicles of Augustus Seton ebook ( 4 short stories)
- The Silent Dead (Alt-Zombie anthology)
- Warlock (Swords and Zombies anthology)
- Cold As Death ebook Seton's origin short story (also in the main collection)
Flower of Scotland 2 Page 8