The Sign of Ouroboros

by David Longhorn

  “But they can't hold an entire village in thrall indefinitely!” protested Marcus. “Outsiders would notice, for a start.”

  “They only need to be in control for a few days,” Brad pointed out. “They probably left the takeover as late as possible.”

  Marcus thought that over.

  “It would make sense to involve the villagers if they want to pervert the familiar May Day ritual to their ends. If only we knew exactly what they're planning.”

  “Sacrifice,” said Brad. “That's all I need to know. If it's symbolic, fine. But if not, we need to be ready to grab Kelly and get her out of there. I know it's a rough and ready approach, but at least it's simple.”

  “I'm with you, of course,” declared Marcus. “For what it's worth.”

  Yeah, you're on the level, but you're no action hero, Brad thought. Which brings me to the tricky part.

  “Guys,” he said, “I need your help tonight. I have to go to Garlock House. And I want you both to monitor Ouroboros, if you can. Make sure they don't spot me, maybe run some interference on my behalf.”

  “What are you going to do?” demanded Kathy.

  “You're not going to try and snatch Kelly?” asked Marcus. “That would be most unwise for several reasons.”

  “I can't tell you,” said Brad. “I'd like to, but the way I see it, if I did, I'd be doomed to fail from the get-go.”

  “You don't trust us?” said Kathy, accusingly.

  “If I've got this right,” said Brad, “you're linked to the rest of the cult, telepathically? So they could know what you know?”

  Kathy reluctantly agreed.

  “So your plan can't be shared with Kathy,” said Marcus, slowly. “But what about me?”

  “What if they take you over somehow between now and tomorrow morning?” asked Brad. “I don't like doing this, but I'm used to working alone and being self-reliant. Sorry, but if this is my show, it has to go by my rules.”

  Marcus shrugged, unwilling to argue further. There was a marked coolness as the three had lunch and then worked out what Brad needed. Kathy was unhappy about being put under by Marcus for the third time, but was eventually won over. It was agreed that the hypnotism session would take place at midnight, when Brad reckoned he would be arriving on the outskirts of the village. More than that, he refused to tell them.

  ***

  “What do you think he's doing?” asked Kathy, as she settled back on the sofa. They were back at the hotel room where Marcus and Kathy were staying.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” replied Marcus. “I only met him a few days ago. He's a bit of a dark horse, really.”

  “Plenty of money, I reckon,” she said. “He hired a private detective, and you. And he paid for our rooms.”

  “He's not short of a few bob,” agreed Marcus. “He works in the oil industry, some kind of geologist, I believe.”

  “Loads of money,” murmured Kathy. “But she still hates him. That's a laugh, isn't it? Some people can have the whole world on a plate and they turn it away.”

  “I don't think his daughter hates him,” objected Marcus, moving a chair to sit facing her a couple of feet away. “Most families have rough patches, especially with adolescent offspring. What cuts do is drive a wedge into a gap that might otherwise close up naturally.”

  Kathy looked bored by his theorizing.

  “Is it time yet?”

  “Nearly,” said Marcus, checking his watch. “You know the drill by now.”

  With a thin smile, the young woman closed her eyes and Marcus began the process of suggestion. After a few minutes, Kathy's eyelids began to flicker, like those of a sleeper having troubling dreams.

  “Can you see them?” asked Marcus. “Ouroboros, the villagers, are they there?”

  “Some of us are asleep,” she replied in a voice just above whisper. “You would find our dreams so strange. Beautiful, but strange. When the earth is cleared off, it will be wonderful. So clean and peaceful.”

  “Cleared off?” he asked.

  “The detritus of a failed and decadent culture must be swept away,” said a voice much clearer than Kathy's. “The process has to begin somewhere. The awakening of Nature's guardians will be the start.”

  “Who is this?” demanded Marcus.

  “I think you know, Mister Valentine,” came the reply. “Your little parlor tricks are becoming very wearisome.”

  Kathy's blank expression gave way to a condescending smile.

  “Olivia Ballard?” asked Marcus.

  “My human name, for now,” said Olivia. “Soon we will move beyond such limitations as individuality.”

  “Then you'll lose your humanity!” exclaimed Marcus, almost forgetting the purpose of the session.

  I must keep her talking, he thought.

  “Being human is vastly overrated,” said the condescending voice. “A pity you are so negative in your attitudes. You would have made a useful ally.”

  “Ally, or tool?” he asked. “You seem to leave converts no real choice in the matter.”

  “If you saw a child crawling towards an open fire you would snatch them away, regardless of their desire to play with the pretty flames,” returned Olivia.

  The verbal jousting went on for several minutes. But then Kathy's brow wrinkled in concentration.

  “Why did you pester me tonight of all nights, Mister Valentine?”

  The directness of the question threw Marcus off balance for a moment.

  “We, that is, I, wanted to glean more information,” he said. “You can't block us out, so don't bother trying!”

  “No, that's not it!” said Olivia. “I'm sensing something else here, in this poor stupid girl's muddled mind. Secrets. Plans.”

  Damn, thought Marcus, this is happening too quickly.

  “I'm going to bring you out of it, Kathy,” he began.

  “Too late, little man!” said Olivia's voice, sneering in triumph. “It seems Brad is trying to play the hero. Well, that will simplify things considerably. A touching reunion of father and daughter, all differences settled at last.”

  Kathy slumped forward, groaning. Drool trickled thinly onto her lap. Marcus did his best to make her comfortable then tried to phone Brad. It seemed the American was out of cell phone range. While he waited for Kathy to come to, he kept calling and texting. Eventually, sometime after one pm, he got a reply.

  “For God's sake, man, what happened?”

  “Nothing unpleasant,” replied Brad. “It all went smoothly, thanks to you two.”

  “But they found out that you were trying to break in!” exclaimed Marcus.

  “No, they found out that you both thought I was targeting Garlock House,” said Brad.

  It took a moment for the truth to sink in.

  “You cunning bastard,” said Marcus. “You guessed they'd probably read her mind so you lied to us. That was the distraction.”

  “Don't knock it, it worked,” replied Brad. “Tell Kathy I'm sorry. And apologies to you, too.”

  “Not at all,” said Marcus wryly, “it was textbook stuff. I just hope whatever you got up to was worth it.”

  ***

  The next morning, Kathy did not come down to breakfast. Marcus figured that she deserved some rest and could hardly be expected to come any closer to the cultists.

  “When this is over,” said Brad, “I'd like to try and do something for her. Is she still taking drugs?”

  “I don't think so,” replied Marcus. “I've seen none of the obvious signs. But she's still a lost soul.”

  “If I can get her some help, I will,” Brad declared. “She's suffered a lot for my sake.”

  “Our sakes,” corrected Marcus. “Ouroboros may be a threat to all of us. What I heard last night might have been grandiose propaganda. But if it were even partly true, the cult really does want to bring the whole of modern civilization crashing down.”

  Brad thought about his dreams of Kelly.

  “Idealism can do even more harm than greed or cyn
icism, can't it?”

  Marcus paused in buttering a slice of toast.

  “All the most violent and destructive forces in history seem to be driven by pure ideals rather than everyday greed.”

  “And that's the problem,” said Brad. “Kelly always was drawn to ideals, Utopias, clean and simple solutions to complex problems.”

  “It's a common fault of the young,” agreed Marcus. “But let's look on the bright side. Ouroboros may simply fail again.”

  “That might be our best bet,” said Brad. “Otherwise I'll just try to grab her and see how it goes.”

  It was about half an hour after dawn on May Day when they arrived at Wychmere. The village still looked quaintly picturesque, but was definitely not sleepy.

  All the villagers were lined up along the edge of the great ditch. They looked zoned-out to Brad, who had walked up to the circle unnoticed. All the locals were facing inward with beatific smiles. All except a handful of younger children, who seemed confused and frightened. He wondered if children were impossible to control, or had simply been ignored as irrelevant by the cultists. People seemed to be in their Sunday best on this Saturday morning; women in print dresses, men in suits. There was even a brass band on a small platform beyond the Fangs. But Brad noticed that everyone from the village or neighborhood was outside the circle on his side of the ditch.

  About a dozen followers of Ouroboros were walking slowly in a circle within the ring of Dancers. In white hooded robes with garlands of wildflowers around their necks, they did not look particularly sinister. In fact, the procession had a touch of Woodstock about it. Brad thought of barefoot Flower Children in the morning sunshine. Kelly, also in white and crowned with flowers, was at the head of the procession, flanked by Salome and Olivia. She looked happy, beautiful, utterly sure of herself.

  At first, Brad couldn't see Clay, the so-called Herald of Ouroboros. Then he noticed a short, plump figure at the back of the procession. Brad made out Clay's face under the hood. The supposed leader looked out of place, as if his inclusion was an afterthought. Clay caught Brad's eye as he went past and his blank expression changed for a moment.

  Is he panicking? He seems confused, maybe scared. This isn't what he signed up for, clearly. But he has no way of breaking free.

  A hoarse voice broke in on Brad's thoughts. Father Quigley burst through the ring of villagers, stumbled down into the ditch, then clambered out. Disheveled and red-faced, his pants caked with mud and grass stains, the old man was wild-eyed and ranting.

  “Whores of Babylon!” he cried. “Devotees of Satan, the Old Serpent!”

  Some of the onlookers laughed, a few seemed annoyed by the interruption. But none of the villagers moved to interfere as Quigley ran forward, brandishing a crucifix. The priestesses did hesitate, but then Olivia gestured for them to continue. As they walked on, the tall woman interposed herself between Quigley and the cultists.

  “You're making a fool of yourself, priest,” she said. “And April Fool's Day has come and gone. This is a very different festival.”

  The old man stopped and looked up at Olivia's impassive features. Then he tried to push the cross into her face. She frowned in distaste and grabbed the priest's wrist, easily forcing the crucifix away. Quigley winced in pain and fell to his knees.

  “No,” he moaned. “Lord, give me strength!”

  “There are no lords here, old man,” said Olivia, raising her voice to reach the nearest villagers. “Only the great goddess. It is her time now.”

  Salome waved to someone and the brass band on the other side of the circle struck up a tune. The onlookers started to sing. The sheer normality of it took Brad by surprise. The tune was cheerful with a folksy feel, while the words seemed to be in archaic English. He made out 'summer is a-comin' in,' and a reference to a cuckoo. As the cheerful voices soared, Olivia wrenched the crucifix from Quigley's hand and pressed it to her forehead. Brad could not hear what she said to the priest then, but he could guess the tone from her scornful smile.

  She's showing him how powerless he is, how little the symbols of his faith matter.

  Something caught his eye, then, a brief flurry of movement near the rear of the procession. Brad could not make out what had happened, except that one of the white-clad women was slight apart from the rest. Clay was holding her by the arm, apparently in some kind of discussion. Nobody else was paying attention, though. Olivia was rounding off her impromptu drama by releasing Quigley and going back to rejoin Kelly, who was still smiling benignly.

  She's under their influence, brainwashed, Brad told himself. But he still could not be sure.

  The parade continued towards the Fangs. Brad shadowed it, moving behind the chain of singing onlookers. He wondered what would happen if he crossed the ditch. He had no idea what he could accomplish if he did. Tearing Kelly away from the cult by force was clearly a non-starter. He had tried talking to her. He felt impotent rage and despair at being reduced to a mere onlooker. The feeling was made worse by his uncertainty as to what was going to happen next. Brad had the sickening conviction that something very real and profoundly evil was about to happen.

  The white-clad cultists were now spacing themselves out in a line along the ditch, leading away from the Fangs. Some kind of wooden seat covered in spring flowers had been set up between the pointed stones, and Kelly took her place on it. Brad realized this was the enthroning of the May Queen; the ancient pagan ritual that Marcus had described. Kelly looked serene and happy. She glanced in her father's direction but gave no sign of having seen him. The singing died down. There was a sense of anticipation. Clay stepped forward, raised his arms. Brad could just make out what he was saying.

  “For thousands of years, the Ancient One has slept, dreaming of the day when we would rediscover the eternal truth. That all Nature is one, and that we are one with Nature. And that this great oneness is Ouroboros, the eternal truth that is reborn today.”

  Brad expected some kind of response to what sounded like a prayer, but instead Clay shuffled off to one side. Olivia stepped forward, and raised her arms.

  Now for the real leader, thought Brad. Clay's just the warm-up man.

  “This is the time of transformation!” proclaimed Olivia. “Do not be afraid, brothers and sisters. For the first time in fifty centuries or more, Ouroboros will become flesh.”

  Brad expected Olivia to continue, but instead the woman simply turned and walked to the nearest stone. The other white-clad cultists did the same, and Brad realized that there was one follower per Dancer. No, he was wrong, there was one person left over, a smallish figure with her head bowed standing by the Fangs.

  A spare wheel at the big party, thought Brad. Do they keep one in reserve or something?

  He was distracted from such thoughts by Olivia removing her robe. There was a sharp intake of breath from some onlookers as they realized she was naked. The other cultists did the same. Brad saw one mother cover her small son's eyes, but other parents gazed on benignly.

  “Yes, different levels of influence,” said Marcus Valentine. “Some are simply less susceptible than others.”

  Brad had not noticed the Englishman sneaking up.

  “I think most of them are well under control, though,” Marcus continued.

  “What kept you?” asked Brad.

  “I had to rent a car. Kathy stole mine,” replied Marcus. “Have you seen her?”

  “No,” said Brad.

  Another wave of exclamations came from the crown, a mixture of awe and excitement. Brad looked back at the cultists. Olivia was writhing on the damp grass by the stone.

  “Possibly having some sort of fit,” said Marcus, uncertainly.

  Then the woman's pale skin began to darken under the morning sunlight. It took on a greenish-gold tinge, and as it altered, her limbs began to change shape. Her arms grew shorter, shrank to tiny flippers, then disappeared entirely.

  This can't be happening, Brad told himself. It's a trick, some kind of mass hypnosis.

&
nbsp; Despite his strenuous attempt to deny it was real, Olivia's transformation continued. Her long, dark hair seemed to withdraw into her skull as her forehead shrank, while her nose and mouth merged to form a kind of muzzle. Even more extreme was the blending of her legs into one tapering mass of flesh. Soon all semblance of humanity was gone, and Olivia had become a snake, ten feet long.

  “Oh my God,” breathed Marcus. “It's not just a metaphor. They really are lamias, or shape-shifters!”

  A gleaming serpent now reared up on its thick coils where Olivia had stood. Along the inner etch of the ditch, the other cultists had chucked off their robes and were changing, too. Someone screamed, and a young woman in a pink frock pulled away from the ring of onlookers. She began to run away across the field beyond the Fangs. Nobody tried to stop her.

  Brad looked over at Kelly. Her face was astonished, awe-struck, but not horrified.

  “I think she was expecting this,” said Marcus, his voice breaking. “She's been prepared for these changes.”

  “But why, what comes next?” whispered Brad. “Or is this it?”

  “No,” said Marcus, “this is not what they mean by renewal, I think. Remarkable, though it is.”

  The huge serpents began to move sinuously around the circle of stones. Brad stared into the red, slit-eye of one monster and felt a very human intelligence looking back at him. Another scream from the crowd, and this time a middle-aged woman and a small child broke away. But, as before, the remaining villagers stared on, some smiling contentedly, others blank-faced as zombies.

  “Come on,” said Brad, not checking to see if Marcus was following. He set off to get round behind the Fangs. He had a vague idea that, if Kelly was threatened in some way, he would swoop in and save her. Details eluded him. As he ran past the crowd, he caught glimpses of the lamias. The snake-beings were now forming up in front of the Fangs, circling nose-to-tail in a kind of grotesque parade. Then the largest creature, the thing called Olivia in human form, opened her huge jaws and gripped the tail of the monster in front of her. The other lamias followed suit.

  “Ouroboros!” gasped Marcus, catching up with Brad as they neared the Fangs. “A circle within the circle. Look at the ditch!”