The Return of the Arinn

by Frank P. Ryan

  ‘Hold on – you telling me this is the Scalpie?’

  Mark said: ‘It isn’t a Scalpie.’

  Nan added: ‘It’s much worse.’

  Even in the few seconds they conversed, the face within the cowl had changed. Its eyes had become dark circles within whites that were blood red orbits. The face leered at them. The cowled head dropped again and the figure returned to its posture of prostration before the intended sacrifice. Even as they took a step back from it, transfixed with horror, its form melted, and the face of the minister was replaced by the head of a fox, its amber eyes aglow.

  Brett groaned: ‘Sweet Jesus!’

  The cloud around it expanded rapidly, and lines of force within it boiled and seethed. Two additional faces appeared next to the fox’s: one was the long face of a man with a glowing cigarette between its lips.

  The man’s face addressed the fox: ‘What you up to, dearie? Come for a little nibble?’

  A third face appeared in the cloud; a woman with purple dyed hair, her mouth open wide in a horrified scream. The cloud metamorphosed once more, and many more faces appeared; faces with frightened eyes wide open, mouths attempting to speak, and mouths gaping wide in a scream. All around the nave, surrounding the prostrate children, spectres writhed and wheeled in a buzzing swarm. There was no escape for the children, Mark, Nan, or Brett, since the monstrous being blocked the single arched door that was both entrance and exit.

  Mark heard the shotgun blasts as Brett fired and pumped repeatedly. The blasts had no effect on the expanding threat. The monster began to flow over the wall behind it, extending over both the side walls and up to the ceiling. It was going to engulf the entire nave, devouring all within it.

  Brett muttered: ‘Darn! I’m out of shells!’

  Mark saw rancid feelers reaching out for them. Nan was screaming at him, mind-to-mind:

  He shouted back:

  Mark and Nan were now working as a single unit through both oracula. They moved as far apart as they could, so the hissing fury couldn’t attempt to catch them both in a single vaporous sweep. But the little church was too confined to allow them to move very far apart and the unconscious children would soon be exposed to attack. The vile being reached out further and further, its amoeba-like protrusions extending to cover everything. Mark and Nan directed their twin torrents of blue-black lightning against the darting, flowing danger, but even as the lightning poured over the spectral heads and pod like spidery arms, the being ensheathed itself in a force of his own; a green glow that insulated it against the attacking force of the Third Power. Even death was powerless against it.

  Mark heard Nan cry out in pain.

  He risked a glance in her direction. He sensed a wound to her forearm. She had managed to twist to avoid the penetration to her heart, but her teeth were bared in a rictus of agony as she forced herself to stay standing, still sending a torrent of the Third Power against the terrible spectacle.

  Mark heard an alien whisper of seduction in Nan’s mind, overwhelming her senses, willing her to become one with it. The horrific thought entered his mind: even if he and Nan were dead already, was it possible – a horrifying thought – that they could be absorbed by this vile, indestructible being? Would their power be absorbed by this creature?

  The shock of this thought awakened a new determination in Mark. Even though he shared Nan’s pain, he redoubled the force of his oraculum against the cloud. He deluged the figure with blue-black lightning. He felt its hold on Nan weaken, but his attack wasn’t powerful enough to kill it. It had taken so much out of him that the strength was now draining from his body, and all resistance with it.

  There was an explosion next to Mark’s right ear; Brett had reloaded the shotgun and had fired it point blank into the leering fox’s face. That shotgun blast appeared to hurt the thing more than any other blow had so far; dark blood leached out of the animal snout, its left eye reduced to a pit of gore.

  Mark’s voice sounded husky, croaky, as he spoke to Brett: ‘I think, maybe, the fox is more special to it than the other faces.’

  In those few moments, Mark was aware that Brett was pumping the gun, getting ready to fire again. It bought Mark a tiny respite, sufficient to let him take a step backwards. He had to do something to protect the children, but he was dizzy – the senses he still shared with Nan were becoming confused. And he had forgotten how closely packed the children were on the floor. He tripped and fell backwards onto the huddled bodies. But his eyes never left the single functioning eye of the fox’s head, which blinked once, a closure in slow-motion, then re-opened: a dark pit within a crater of blood. Mark read the resolve there. It would ignore Brett’s shotgun and any danger to itself: it reached out a cloud-like limb, ready to extend it into Mark’s heart.

  Mark raised his left arm to block the attack. He saw the pod-like tentacle rise, in a blur of anticipation, like the strike of a rattlesnake . . .

  Then he heard a new crackling, and the air around him was consumed with a new flame, thunderous and echoing. At the same moment, he witnessed a look of shock in the rancid fox’s eye. And then that same eye performed a ballet, turning around in an impossible circle so the veined white back of the eyeball was directed towards him. He realised that the thing was attempting to look behind it, to where a glowing runed blade, curved as a scimitar, was cleaving through the smoky flesh of its being. The cutting edge of the blade ignited the flesh of the monster as it cleaved and cleaved again, burning through flesh and green-glowing protection as if through beeswax.

  Mark was looking at a Fir Bolg battleaxe, its runes ablaze with a throbbing power he had only ever seen wielded in the fist of his friend, Qwenqwo Cuatzel, dwarf mage of the Fir Bolg.

  But Qwenqwo couldn’t possibly be here.

  Beyond the falling monster, a tall, emaciated figure filled the silhouette of the now wide-open door. It was Padraig, his fist clasped around the central hilt of the sigmoid bladed battleaxe. He had eschewed casting the weapon, choosing to spin it about the fulcrum of his fist to make it into an executioner’s blade. The twin blades tore into the monstrous cloud, extinguishing face after face, a havoc of destruction until not a single one remained amid the stinking morass of putrescent flesh.

  *

  It took the crew hours to rescue the children from the despoiled nave of the church; time enough for Cal and Bull to join them after clearing the last of the Paramilitaries from the town. Now, the Pig had ferried the crew back to the green, where survivors from the town’s population were gathering around their dead. Brett was standing at the crossroads, a cigar clamped between his teeth, his shotgun thrown over his left shoulder. The air was full of smoke and ash, and many of the town’s buildings were still burning, their rafters crashing downwards, sending out flares of sparks even in the near distance. The crew were doing what they could to help the survivors – making sure the terrified kids had adults to take care of them. They were also making sure the survivors understood the importance of abandoning the town.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ Brett remonstrated with an elderly couple who were resistant to leaving their home. ‘The bad guys will come back. They’ll come looking for what went wrong with their plans here. You sure don’t want to be around when they do.’

  Mark passed the couple a loaf of bread and some cans from the Pig’s stores. Behind them, Tajh and Sharkey were helping those who were identifying the dead. All the while the snow fell without cease. Mark watched as the surviving townspeople gathered the bodies into family groups. It was heartbreaking to watch and he wanted to help, but the light would be gone in three quarters of an hour and the crew needed to head out. Cal and Bull rode up to them on two captured BMWs. Cal took Mark to one side.

  ‘We got us some captured uniforms – and a package
that could prove a useful distraction. As a matter of fact, it’s given me an idea about how we might get through Seebox’s cordon.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We’ll need two outriders from here on in. Given Bull and Sharkey’s injuries, that’s got to be you and me,’ he said to Mark.

  ‘Okay, but I’ll need to warn Nan.’ Mark looked around and spotted her close to the Pig, helping Brett. A father, with a frightened family in tow, was baulking at the advice that they might have to flee the town in such wintry weather.

  ‘Where can we possibly go to?’

  Brett advised him. ‘Take what you need to keep warm and rig up a makeshift shelter. Head north, but make sure you keep off the major roads and avoid any towns and cities.’

  Mark walked up to them, Cal following, and nodded agreement. ‘We’ve sent a message to HQ about what we’ve found here. They’re getting ready to fight back against Seebox and his forces. Hide in the woods. Tell everybody you meet to do the same. In time, somebody will get to you. The Resistance is coming.’

  Mark explained to Nan that he would be taking one of the bikes and acting as an outrider, but he wanted to talk to Padraig before they parted. They found him leaning on the big standing stone on the Green. Mark insisted on shaking his hand.

  ‘You saved our lives.’

  ‘I owe you my own.’

  ‘What happened to the battleaxe?’

  ‘Back with Brett – stowed in the Pig.’

  Mark smiled a rueful smile. He recalled the last time he had shaken Padraig’s hand. It had been inside the old forge at the back of the sawmill, in Clonmel, when Padraig had agreed to let Mark help him forge the blade of Alan’s spear – the Spear of Lug. It all seemed so long ago. Today, Padraig’s handshake was a lot frailer than Mark remembered it.

  ‘Sorry it took me so long to get to you. Even then I almost didn’t have the strength to use the battleaxe. It’s such a heavy blade.’

  ‘It was lucky for us that you were here,’ Mark replied.

  Brett came over to join them, still smoking what was now the stogie of his cigar. He took a last puff on it before squashing it into the snow at his feet. ‘I guess we’re about ready to head out?’

  Nan said: ‘First, tell me – there was something you said, back in the church, about an artist?’

  Brett scratched at the dark stubble over his cheek. ‘You mean Goya and his nightmares? You never heard of Goya?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Well now! I gather that Mark here is taking one of the bikes, so maybe I can accompany you back to the Pig?’ He patted his arm, indicating she could link it to accompany him. ‘What Goya did, he painted a whole series of nightmare cartoons: Witches and goblins, mad gods, demons. But every one of them with human faces.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘But these pictures – the witches and demons and things – people called them Goya’s demons. Some thought he was mad, driven insane by the cruelties he witnessed during the Napoleonic wars, but others think there’s something deep in human nature that he recognised – something like those spectres back there in the church.’

  They heard a child scream nearby – some little one frightened out of his or her wits, becoming hysterical before an adult’s arms had time to comfort it.

  Nan said: ‘I think I understand. There are things that we sense, perhaps in our dreams – our nightmares. Things we can’t pretend to understand, or explain, in the cold light of day.’

  Brett hesitated outside the nearside porthole. ‘Goya blamed the sleep of reason. When reason sleeps, that’s when the nightmares come flooding in.’

  Cal, who was already seated on one of the two BMW bikes, said: ‘Can we all get a move on. Cogwheel’s waiting.’

  Mark watched Nan climb in through the porthole, where she huddled down along with Brett and Padraig. Then he headed for the second of the heavy bikes, slipped on the Paramilitary jacket and helmet he found on the seat, and powered up to ride point with Cal.

  Owly Gizmo

  The thing fluttered clumsily through the air to land, with a tinkling sound, on Gully’s left shoulder. He had half expected it to weigh a ton because it was made out of steel, but it was astonishingly light. He could feel its claws, the size of a baby’s fist, take a sharp grip of his skin through the jacket. The head spun through ninety degrees to look at him with ball bearing eyes. Its pupils were steely black enclosed by irises of gold. At the dead centre a pinpoint of the purest, fiercest red pulsated, as if the pyre of the daemon bot illuminated its inner spirit.

  The slave bot seemed every bit as shocked to meet Gully as he was to meet it.

  ‘It is customary to speak a word or two of welcome when a slave bot is introduced to its master.’

  ‘I don’t rightly know wot to say.’

  ‘Hello, might be appropriate.’

  ‘Hi ya!’ he ventured.

  It hooted back at him.

  A thrill exploded through Gully. ‘It’s a tawny! I know because tawny owls is ’ooters!’

  ‘Does this please you?’

  ‘It’s perfick!’

  ‘I am flattered.’

  ‘I can’t believe you made it in that furnace.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘But you told me daemon bots don’t have no his nor her.’

  ‘That is true, but I’ve changed my mind. Surely we can allow some flexibility – the circumstances may be taken into account.’

  ‘Wot circumstances?’

  ‘The companion you pine for is female. I paid heed to your requirements in her new figure – in her plumage. I confess that I also took liberties with her eyes.’

  ‘Wif ’er eyes?’

  Gully didn’t know what those liberties might be any more that he knew the difference between a male and female owl’s eyes.

  As if reading his mind, Bad Day said: ‘The females are bigger.’

  ‘Wicked!’

  ‘Might I encourage you to address the bot directly? Establish a working rapport.’

  Gully’s eyes widened still further. ‘Like I got to fink up some name for it?’

  ‘For her. And please address her directly rather than through me. She has a daemon spirit. And where I come from—’

  ‘Daemon bots is polite – I know.’

  ‘Hmph!’ The exclamation was as deep as a roll of thunder.

  The slave bot fluttered her wings. Gully stared at this strange being perched on his shoulder – this newborn juvenile what was still looking back at him.

  ‘I reckon I’ll call you Owly Gizmo!’

  Bad Day sighed. The bucket jaw wagged in a clanking rhythm that might have been a chuckle.

  Gully couldn’t get over the fact there was an owl perched on his shoulder. He whispered: ‘You’re my perfick Owly Gizmo.’

  The slave bot hooted again. When Gully held out his two hands, cradled together in a bowl, she hopped down onto them, continuing to stare up into his face from her new perch.

  ‘Look at you! You got two bushy eyebrows wot meet in the middle – an’ a whiskery little beard, like some old army colonel!’

  ‘Do I observe the manifestations of affection?’

  ‘I like ’er, if that’s wot you mean.’ Gully was looking to see if the bot had ears. He couldn’t see none, but she could hear him. He was sure of that. ‘I know wot it means to me that she’s a girl owl, but wot’s it mean to ’er?’

  ‘The donning of sexuality is complex with daemon bots. I could tell you some amusing stories.’

  But Gully wasn’t listening. Owly Gizmo was stretching out her wings. The wingspan was huge, at least two feet. ‘Oh, wow!’ Gully preened. ‘Just look at them feathers. Every single feather is perfick.’

  Owly pulled in her wings and fidgeted for several moments, shuffling from foot to foot. He felt her claws digging into his skin. He could see
the feathers slide over one another as she puffed up her chest. It was like – oh, wow – she was really breathing.

  ‘You didn’t, you know, put some kind of an ’eart inside of her?’

  ‘That would be telling.’

  Gully was entranced by it: a heart of fire beating inside that puffed up chest! He didn’t dare to pinch himself for fear he might wake up and spoil the dream. He studied the wings, the body, the speckled plumage. He brushed his fingers down over her stocky little head, her shoulders, her wings and tail, thrilling at the finish of her ivory and chocolate brown beauty. He lifted her up close, only inches from his eyes, to admire her beak and big eyes, set wide in the almost human face.

  ‘You’re amazing – you know that? You came out of all that bangin’ an’ clankin’ an’ all them lightning sparks.’

  Owly Gizmo just looked back at him fiercely, then she climbed up his body to get back onto his shoulder and, with a shove of her claws, took off, flapping up into the air and soaring around the enclosed space like a glider wheeling on a draught of air.

  ‘She’s a real good learner.’

  ‘A chip off the old block.’

  She landed on a rusty rail and then, with the tottering balance of a tight-rope walker, she waddled along the rail, her body rolling from side to side as she placed one foot determinedly after another.

  ‘Look at you! Gorgeous – that’s wot you are. You’re my gorgeous Owly Gizmo marching along like some old colonel.’

  She cocked her head at him, from a distance of ten feet away and opened her beak and hooted.

  Gully cheered.

  The owl took off again in wobbly flight, her wings beating a fraction too slowly for her weight, and headed away from him down one of the gargantuan shady tunnels.

  ‘Hey – wot you up to?’

  ‘I think she wants to play.’

  ‘Like ’ide an’ seek?’

  When Gully climbed back onto his feet he almost fainted. The shock of the arrival of Owly Gizmo had made him forget that he was starving. He hadn’t eaten in what must be days. If he stayed on here, in Bad Day’s lair, he was going to starve to death, but still he wanted to follow the bot.