Cthulhu Cymraeg

by Probert, John Llewellyn

  Why indeed? The Christian tradition has it that the grey mare was kicked out of the stable in which Christ was born and searches until the end of time for a place to stay. The Celtic connection was probably to the cult of the horse goddesses Rhiannon or Epona.

  “The horse was seen as a symbol of power and fertility,” I explained, “and animals that had the power to cross between this world and the otherworld were traditionally grey in colour. Or white.”

  And the veil between this world and the dark country was at its thinnest in the darkest time of the year, allowing entities from the otherworld the opportunity to cross over. Perhaps the Mari Lwyd was a symbolic way of paying respect to the “undiscovered country” as well as proving humanity’s strength and intelligence in beating back the denizens of the dark.

  The chest and the mast waited for me in the stockroom while Nick drove to the garage for his MOT. The boxes of books he’d “donated” to me – yes, all Jeremy Clarkson “bibles” and Readers’ Digest hardbacks – were covered in black bin bags, ready for transporting to the tip. My assessment of their worth was correct – and these hadn’t been affected by mould. The true treasure now lay before me.

  My research confirmed what I already knew: this skull was abnormally large for any breed of horse. Using an online equine conformation tool I worked out the ratio of the horse skull to the body. It meant the beast would have been a whopping thirty hands high – at least twelve higher than the largest draft horse today. Three metres tall.

  There was something else: on some horses there sits a canine on the maxilla, on the bar between the incisors and the squared molars. This canine – or “wolf tooth” as some referred to it – is rare in domestic horses. A relic of the first premolar, perhaps…but there is no more than one on each bar.

  This had three.

  There were no other abnormalities to the skull itself, aside from an incision in the maxillary bone to allow the tip of the mast entrance. I peered closely, seeing old material doubtless used as wadding to prevent the masthead breaking through the skull. Older even than the sheets that act as the shroud for the Mari Lwyd; this material was crumbling, powdering like chalk.

  Intrigued, I unwrapped the mast from its bundle of rags and marvelled at the smoothness and lightness of the six-foot pole of ash; a perfect complement to the unnatural horse skull. The carved, flat masthead easily slid into the incision at the rear with a click like teeth clamping together, and I realised the horsehead shape wasn’t an affectation – it was designed to hold the skull firmly into place.

  There was a wire loop on the mast that hooked into the lower jaw, and a cord pulley system enabled the bearer to raise and lower the mandible at will. I couldn’t resist; I raised the mast, the horse skull brushing the crumbling plaster of the ceiling, and activated the pulley three times.

  The clatter of perfectly maintained molars clamping together was amplified by the tapering nasal bones, so it came out as a strange fluting sound. Only the incisors and the canine on the bar made the distinct snap-snap-snap! sound, which echoed around the bookcases. A chill descended, along with the dust from the wadding within the skull. Those incisors surely were not designed for cropping grass. Those, and the “wolf’s teeth”, were there for another reason.

  I lowered the Mari Lwyd and propped it in the corner of the stockroom. I brushed the plaster and dust from my shoulders and scalp, wrinkling my nose at the smell of ancient bone and mould. I stared up into the eye sockets, no longer gleaming.

  I sat back in my chair with a fresh glass of wine, rubbing the bridge of my nose in a subconscious effort to stop the ever-present irritation in my sinuses. The itching was different, harsher, as though I had snorted powdered glass. I sniffed, snorted, and then blew my nose. I stood and went to the stockroom to lock up.

  Usually I ball the tissue and throw it into the waste bin. This time I glanced at the contents, the tissue trembling in my hands. There were streaks of blood in the mucus.

  I stared at the dust on my shoulders, the overly white powder so similar to that which spilled from the nasal cavities of the Mari Lwyd. Similar in scent as well; I sniffed my fingers and then inhaled the fungous odour emanating from the ancient skull. I dropped the balled tissue.

  Spores. Oh, Jesus…

  “What the hell are you?”

  In reply, the mandible dropped and the beast’s maw gaped at me. Then the Mari Lwyd advanced. I started, momentarily panicked, until I realised the jaw had merely loosened itself from the pulley mechanism, and the shift in weight had upset the balance of gravity.

  I put out a hand to halt the thing’s fall. Perhaps I was more tired than I realised, but when the pole met my outstretched hand it felt heavier; the Mari Lwyd slammed into my palm. I grunted in surprise, and my own centre of gravity was upset. I was forced back, and my ankle collided with the binbag-wrapped books from Wales. It was that made me stumble and fall, had me crashing to the floor and cracking my own skull on the door jamb, just as the ancient skull came rushing to meet mine, the white, chalk-like powder disgorging from its mocking jaws…

  I have only been knocked unconscious once before in my life, the result of a drunken argument with some thuggish lout from the Town Arms who objected to me quietly reading a book in a pub full of Manchester United kit-wearing chavs glued to the football on the big screen. An argument I lost, needless to say. But what I remember most of that night is the surreal and terrifying dreams that followed.

  Not so much the content of the nightmares, more the feeling and heightened sense of reality that accompanied them. It was that same sensation of translocation and hyper-reality that I bore with me to the land of sleep. And the mares truly were of the night.

  I stood alone upon a snowbound riverbank. The river was nothing but a morass of slush and churned snow, fighting against the current. The cut of the banks and the width of the river looked familiar, but it was the absence of the eighteenth-century arches of the bridge I cycled over every morning to work from Crowmarsh that baffled me, initially prevented me realising I was on the riverbank of Wallingford. Gone was the courtyard of The Boathouse opposite, gone too the slender spire of St Peter’s Church. I turned, and as far as my eyes could see the landscape was barren, featureless, coated in pristine snow.

  I shivered, a double chill cutting through me, because the snow and ice were real – my feet were frozen in my trainers and the and my skull throbbed with the leeching effect of the wind – and Wallingford had a bridge, had indeed been a river crossing, since Roman times, if not before.

  There was no crossing. There were no signs of habitation. I looked into the steel-grey sky and saw nothing but the promise – or threat – of more snow to come. I shuddered, my teeth chattering violently. I hugged my chest, straining to keep whatever body warmth I could from being leeched from the T-shirt and jeans I was wearing when still in the bookshop.

  The wind howled in my ears, became alternately a mournful howl and a shriek of triumph, of unnatural glee at the prospect of feeding on a sole human being.

  I sank to my knees and buried my head in my hands, crying. I smelled that awful stench of fungus on my fingers, the mould that had issued from the mouth of the Mari Lwyd. The howl became louder, deafening, and I could discern a strange rhythm to it; an alternating pattern, that would have been a chant if uttered by human vocal cords. Something utterly inhuman…and yet, disturbingly familiar. Somewhere, I had heard this before.

  I looked up and saw the very snow itself whirl into waves that swirled around me, rising and falling in time with the inhuman song. They coalesced, condensed, took humanoid form. I couldn’t make out true shape of the three beings that towered above me, but a fiery glow emanated from each, giving form and texture to their faces.

  Three scarlet circles upon each sloping snout. Three burning eyes illuminated the broad, tapering nasals and gave unholy illumination to the incisors and wolf’s teeth in the maxillary bones. The jaws gaped, issued fire and spat fresh, blinding white powder at me. Not sno
w, but a powdery, chalk-like substance that reeked of fungus and ancient stone, and I realised with horror I was surrounded by three of the creatures, each of which owned a skull like the unnatural cranium upon the Mari Lwyd in my shop.

  I leapt to my feet, the cold forgotten, running blindly. Ice chips pelted my eyeballs and tears streamed from my sockets, salt tears and unendurable cold blinding me. I pushed past one of the horses, and felt solid muscle and horseflesh, warm fur and hot blood. It uttered a cry like a horse’s whinny, but amplified and echoing like the howls that could only have issued from prehistoric beasts on the arctic tundra. A huge foreleg lifted from the snow, three feet of damp fetlock appearing, coloured grey-brown with churned mud and clay soil, and I realised with fresh horror the beasts were even taller than I had assumed – the sheer weight of them had pressed their limbs into the ground.

  No, not just their weight, but that of their riders. As the mount reared above me, its hoofs glittering with a steel-like mineral that turned them into edged ploughshares, I caught a brief glance of the entity mounted on the grey nightmare.

  A glimpse, merely a second, but a brief moment in time that stretched to eternal, endless eons, as my human mind struggled to comprehend the alien being atop the nightmarish mount.

  The ground sloped beneath me and suddenly gave way. I was up to my midriff in churning, semi-liquid winter; the frozen river claimed me. I went under and steel bands of cold crushed my ribcage, squeezing out the last of my air. The grey slush above me began to freeze instantly, the alternating patterns of light and dark ice refracting the alien light from the mounts’ eyes – three-lobed, burning eyes – and the rainbow-hued auras of their riders, turning my icy tomb into a kaleidoscopic hell.

  It was ice that carried me to a second unconsciousness, but it was fire that brought me back. The heat from an August sun burned my eyes as painfully as three-lobed orbs of those monstrous horse-creatures.

  Crystal blue sky replaced the tarnished, grey, lowering storm clouds of my dream – or vision. Diesel exhaust fumes replaced the twisting, writhing snow patterns. And Nick Glass stood before me, now blocking the setting sun, as tall and imposing as the beasts on the frozen riverbank.

  “You really should stay off the booze, mate.” He held a Clipper to his rollup, disapproval on his face. “You wanna kip in your stockroom, that’s your business – but try not to shag the merchandise, yeah?”

  I rubbed my forehead, wincing with the sudden pain that throbbed in my temples. My mouth was stale and furry, and my nostrils were blocked. I felt like I’d been on an all-nighter, but…I lowered my hand and squinted at Nick.

  “What d’you mean?” I winced again, this time at the pain in my throat and the hoarse voice that emanated from it. “I love books, but not in that way.”

  Nick thrust a thumb over his shoulder at the source of the diesel fumes. I tilted my head and saw an ancient, rusted Dormobile. Hammerite paint finish and mud were probably the only things keeping it together. Or perhaps the spray-painted stars and moons were blessed by Merlin or Gandalf, or something. Threadbare curtains twitched in time with the misfiring engine, and a thick bearded face smiled through the tobacco-smeared driver’s window. A leisurely thumbs-up from the owner and a quizzical look at me and then the vehicle roared and spluttered, bumping off the kerb and driving away, its rattling exhaust pipe spewing more fumes that swirled over the kerb and into my stockroom. I coughed and turned my head, and then I realised the Mari Lwyd was gone.

  “I almost lost the sale, thanks to you.” He had to shout over the roar of the misfiring engine. “They came in the same time I did, and saw you sparko on yer back, the hobby-horse on top of ya.”

  “Wait a minute…go back. I’m missing something. You telling me you found a buyer already?” I rubbed the back of my head. An egg-sized bruise had decided to make its presence known to me.

  “Yeah. I put the photo and a shout-out on the Bunkfest Facebook page. Got a reply straight away.” He beamed, patting his shirt pocket and the wad of twenty pound notes it contained. “Five hundred notes they paid.”

  I took a deep breath and decided to chance getting to my feet. “Thanks for the concern for my health, Nick. I’ll remember you in my will.” The floor swayed beneath me and the doorway tilted, but I managed to stay upright. “Who’s ‘they’, anyway?”

  Nick shrugged. “A three-piece on the bill tonight. ‘Stranger Crossings’ they call themselves.”

  I stood in the doorway. Red, failing sunlight bathed my face and the stink of hippy van exhaust fumes faded. The air smelled sweet and summery again, but the prehistoric winter stayed in my mind and the chill remained in my body. My teeth chattered.

  “Shit, man, you do look ill. Want me to run you over to the doc’s?”

  “No, I’ll be okay.” That remained to be seen, but the mystery of Nick’s buyer now took precedence, and temporarily banished the cold from my mind. I turned to him, standing in the space I had parked the Mari Lwyd. Despite Nick’s bulk, that section of the stockroom looked empty, bare, now the six foot ash pole and alien horse skull had gone.

  “They needed it tonight?”

  Nick looked up and shrugged, folded his arms defensively. “Nothing sinister about it. They told me they’ve been looking for another Mary’s Fluid to match their other two.”

  Other two?

  I went into panic mode. The mention of two other Mari Lwyd structures that matched the third Nick had sold filled me with dread. No longer the annoyance that a calculating gyppo hiding behind the folky façade of a dance group knew the value of rarities more than I did, but the memory of what I had dreamed – no, not dreamed, experienced.

  Three mares. Three riders. It couldn’t be a coincidence. That hallucination – that vision – was telling me something.

  “What else do you know about this lot?”

  Nick frowned. “A fusion of Welsh folk dance and Tibetan monk chanting, or something. Having a launch of their first album next week, and the Bunkfest is their first live act. Chrissakes, man, what are you so wound up about? Google ‘em if you’re so bothered.”

  Stranger Crossings’ website told me nothing. Just tour dates, which only included microfestivals like the Bunkfest – it’d be a while before they got to headline V Festival, Reading or Glastonbury, and with their repertoire it was hardly surprising. Welsh folk and Tibetan chant fusion, for God’s sake. No wonder they were sharing the Saturday Night slot with sea-shanty act Short Drag Roger.

  I sneezed on the keyboard, alarmed at the fresh blood that mingled with mucus on the keyboard. There was more than last night, and the smell of ancient stone and overpowering fungi returned. That only fired me further. I continued tapping and clicking away, ignoring the slimy stickiness of the keys and mouse buttons.

  Basic photos and bios of the members – again, nothing special. Three hippy types in their early forties, all with middle-class first names and surnames that had to have been made up: Tarquin Leng, Quentin Lemuria, and Julian Kardath. Travellers in both sense of the word: - what most of Wallingford would call hippies – and globe-trotters with the visa stamps of far-off countries that only the well-off could afford, or would want to visit.

  Links to iTunes and Amazon to preorder their album. The track listing of Lloigor of Logres was a bizarre list of Welsh and Oriental names. “The Lament of Y’Ha Nthlei”; “The Cloak of Tawil at-Umr”; “The Sighs of Anwynn”; “Shadrach’s Hybrids”; “Tcho-Tcho Llamas Day”; “Y Fari Lwyd”…

  There! “Y Fari Lwyd” – the Mari Lwyd Song. There was an option to play a sample. I clicked the window and a trio of badly harmonised male voices filtered through the speakers.

  “If there are people here

  Who can summon Lloigor,

  Then let us hear them now

  Then let us hear them now

  Then let us hear them now

  Tonight.”

  Nick snorted. “Well, at least they translated it. Can’t see that stuff flying off the shelves, somehow – hey! Where
y’going?”

  I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t stop. I had to get to Stranger Crossings before they started their set. What I would say to them, how I would try to convince them not to play anything I hadn’t considered.

  My head pounded, as hard as my feet on the pavement. The evening heat beat down on me, oppressive and doom-laden. My eyes itched and I no longer needed to heed the warning of avoiding the hayfever-rub – the thought of further grinding the spores into my eyes turned my stomach to ice water.

  The song played in my ears. The words weren’t part of a harmless folk-ritual; the tune they were sung to was the exact same music the alien riders of those monstrous steeds sang in my visitation,

  In the Market Square strangers and townsfolk alike stared at me as I pushed past them. My eyes streamed with tears and side curtains of crimson appeared in my peripheral vision, threatening to close. Stilt-walkers waded through the mass of humanity like the night mares of my visitation, obscuring the Town Hall. The War Memorial loomed above me, the brass statue holding out the wreath like a noose. The flint walls of St Mary’s Church caught the sunset and writhed like huge grey maggots, the mortar flashing horizontal streaks of scarlet; cemented with blood.

  I cried in despair, and thin serpents of blood writhed from my nostrils, falling to the cobbles in thick spots like heavy rain. I coughed, spat, and felt steel bands tighten around my ribs. The curtains drew closer and the song filled my mind.

  People gave me a wide birth as I half-ran, half-stumbled towards the Kinecroft. The green field was a riot of colour and motion; flags of all nations fluttered in a light breeze from the performance and beer tents; vintage steam engines, their black iron shining like ebony, puttered around the green; yeasty smells of micro-brewery ales mingled with the scents of burgers and noodles, but they couldn’t overcome the stench of blood and putrid fungus in my nostrils.

  “Well, gentle friends

  Here we come