by Adam Cloake
From that day, he knew they would not let him die.
And on that day, he had cried for the first time in many years.
He cannot climb the trees high enough to jump to his death, and starving himself would be too long and too unpleasant. So, he stopped trying to end his life a long time back.
As time passed, his crying transformed itself, first into a yell, then eventually softening to a low whimper. Now he barely makes a sound at all.
For a long time, he prayed that he would one day see evidence that his skin and hair were growing older. When that day arrived – when he realised that he was indeed aging – he laughed, such was his joy. He had not, after all, been condemned to this wooded prison for eternity. One day, he would be allowed the gift of death.
He spends most of his time sitting on the witch’s altar, staring off into nothingness, as the blonde hair on the backs of his hands turn white, and the skin of his fingers bunch into wrinkles.
His victims continue to watch silently as he fades into lonely decay.
A few minutes before Derek Hill entered his new prison, a man died on the mountainside near Tibradden Woods. Bernie Mara was old and sick, and had been preparing himself for months. He had lived on the streets of Dublin for many years, each one more difficult than the last. All of his family were gone.
When the sickness began to grow in his stomach and in his kidneys, he knew it was there, and he knew it was final. His health had been poor for years, so the icy revelation that his life was ending had come as no surprise to him. Now that the sickness was here, eating through the soft, vulnerable parts of his body, he sought no medical advice, and asked for no assistance.
He simply waited out the days.
Miranda had found Bernie like this in the cold, dirty side street, less than a week before his death. As soon as he saw her, he knew that this young woman could help him. He believed that she could make the end happier. She could take away some of the terror.
And she did.
The potion she gave Bernie relieved much of his pain, making him calmer.
On his last night – the Sunday night – she came to him again, to take him away. It was late, and dark, but he was ready.
She drove him to the mountains, bringing him away from the noise and clutter of the city. He was terribly weak, but the touch of her hand in his, and the soft words she sang to him in that strange language, gave him the strength he needed to walk up the steep hillside. She helped him remember the wife who had once held his hand as they walked together along similar country paths. So much time had passed since then, and she was long since gone.
In his last hours, the young woman showed him wonderful visions, magical sights – sights that he could actually feel. Even though he could barely move his body, Bernie’s soul danced with the memories of all his old sweethearts. He heard himself joking along with old, yet freshly-remembered, friends. He tasted again the warmth of the food from the family table, and delighted again in the parental tousling of his boyish hair.
Having had no reason to smile or to laugh for years, he smiled and laughed now. He had expected his final breaths to be terrifying, but Miranda made them calm and soothing. The death which claimed him was a warm one, a kind one.
Bernie’s body was found two days later. It lay among fallen leaves halfway up the Dublin Mountains.
Beside it was a black and gold Tripp suitcase.
When it was taken to the morgue, the body was easily recognised by all those who saw it – a man of 42, recently released from prison. They had seen him on the news. They were looking at the face, and the body, of Derek Hill. The clothes he was wearing were Derek Hill’s clothes. The coroner swabbed him, and she found that he had the DNA of Derek Hill.
The body was riddled with cancer, which had clearly gone undetected during his time in prison. Although this seemed bizarre, it was quickly accepted. Hill’s physiology had caused confusion before. This was just more of the same. Besides, now that they had evidence that he was finally no more, everyone was happy to put him behind them. There were few questions asked.
Miranda switched off the TV news. She still felt sadness over Bernie’s death, and the fact that his identity had disappeared with him, but she was content that she had done the right thing.
She and Sean had dressed him in some of the clothes from Hill’s suitcase. From there, it had taken her five stressful hours to complete the spell. Once the dock leaf had been removed from Sean’s hand, and the first stage of the charm was completed, she had wanted Sean to leave her. That way, she could guard him from witnessing her distress during the ritual. He had, however, insisted on remaining, to lend her his strength.
She didn’t have the power to cure the old man’s illness, or to save his life, but she believed that his death served a valuable purpose. The existence of a body, and the widespread belief that Hill was dead, would bring relief to the whole community, as well as closure to the families of his victims.
Miranda left the living room. On her way to the bedroom, she took Sean’s new hat from the stand in the hallway. In the room, she found him sitting at the dressing table in his vest and underwear. There was a raggedy book of charms open before him. Smiling, Miranda observed his furrowed forehead as he concentrated on the candle burning between his cupped fingers. Within seconds, the orange flame had changed, gradually going from green to red, before finally settling on purple.
Silently applauding him, Miranda kissed Sean on the forehead, near his damaged eyebrow. She then popped the hat on his head. It was her first gift to him – apart from the magic – a black fedora, like the type worn in the classics by Mitchum and Bogart. At first, he had been reluctant to wear it, except inside the house. Over the past few days, however, his confidence had grown. Now he wore it regularly as they went out for their evening walks.
She took his hand and led him towards the bed.
As they sat together on the duvet, she stroked the bruises on his face, reminding him that he still had a few welcome weeks of compassionate leave ahead. Manning, his Team Leader, had shown more concern than expected when Sean had phoned him to say that Hill had beaten him up and, for some unknown reason, had run off into the Woods.
Miranda was aware that the guilt of what they had done still troubled him, as it did her. They had promised each other – and themselves – that they would never use her magic for such a purpose again. She had taken time away from the pharmacy to help him through these feelings. So far, it seemed to be working. Although Sean was clearly benefitting from his recuperation, he was still looking forward to getting back to work. These days, his life seemed to have a new vigour to it, and she was confident that much of his recent cynicism was gone.
Before they lay down, Sean took off the fedora. Without looking, he threw it across the room. It sailed towards the chair by the dressing table, landing perfectly on one of the back struts. It spun once, then came nobly to rest.
As they lay side-by-side, he asked her, “What am I thinking?”
“I have no idea,” she smiled, “but it’s not hard to guess.”
They nestled closer to each other, their warmth and their passion rising.
They both knew that Derek Hill – from within his bizarre prison – would haunt them for the rest of their lives, but they would always have moments like these, when they would be allowed to forget him.
Conall
Conall was frightened again. He was being dragged through a familiar monthly terror, as he ran up the rocky track, and into the hills. Although he had been assaulted in this way many times during his young life, he knew he would never grow used to it.
The dusk surrounding him was turning to darkness. Soon, the pale moon would become brighter. She would transform herself into the full circle of powerful golden light that he had come to loathe so much.
And when the moon changed, so would he.
Conall had just a few minutes left before this change began. Soon, his whole body would be torn asunder. But, worse th
an this, everything about him, everything that he was, would be horribly recreated.
He needed, before it was too late, to get as far away from the village as he could. And so, he ran, stumbled, then ran again. When the moon was full, and at her most vindictive, the others below – his family – would be in danger. But this danger would come, not from any outside threat, but from Conall himself.
And it was all the fault of that yellow bitch in the sky.
On these nights – the brightest ones – when she had command of the heavens, the moon stole from him. In her full roundness, she was strong enough to take away his thoughts, his memories, his very being. But worse, and in the most painful way imaginable, she replaced them with something else – something hideous. The creature that Conall was becoming was as different from himself as if it came from one of those distant stars.
Already, while he was still only a few miles from his home, and many more miles from his destination, he could feel the change begin. His guts were beginning the gradual, steady boil that would end with them becoming the guts of that other creature.
The taste of copper in his mouth could have been fear, but he knew it was really his own blood that he was tasting. Conall’s teeth were being pulled back into his gums, while new teeth were forming deep inside his skull and lower jaw.
How sorely he missed the company of his older brother along this path. They were both young – practically adolescents – but they had both been cursed with the same affliction. For months, they had made this hateful journey together. They had screamed in pain together, each unable to feel sympathy for the other, as both their bodies were dragged through the same fiery torture.
But now his brother was dead, and Conall wished that he was, too.
He raced further up the slope. His legs were becoming tired, but he knew this wouldn’t last. Soon, they would be driven by the energy of the hidden beast.
He could feel his heartbeat grow steadily faster, but this was only partly caused by his hurrying along the uneven, treacherous rocks; his heart was also changing in size and shape. Conall knew nothing about the intricate biology of his own body. He didn’t know that the auricles, ventricles, and arteries of his heart were being stretched like the tautest rubber, almost to the point of ripping and bursting. It was this process which had killed his brother. His heart had been weak. He had fought the moon too hard and for too long, and she had wrenched the fight right out of him. One night, two months back, both their hearts stopped at the same time, as their new ones were being formed. But the elder brother’s had never restarted. Conall, already far down his own tunnel of pain and darkness, had been unaware of this until the following morning. Staggering back to the village in the cold dawn, he had found the lonely corpse lying twisted among the rocks.
And now, Conall feared that the same end was beckoning to him. Not just his heart, but all his organs – his stomach, his liver, his lungs – were the wrong size for his new body. In the most painful way possible, they would all be forced to dissolve, and then reform.
Up ahead, at the summit of the hill, he could see the others. They were waiting in the usual place, the circle of rocks, about fifty paces away from him. There were four in the group, two males and two females – the same four who came here every month to hide their transformations. Conall didn’t know numbers, but he sensed that there should have been one more. His brother was no longer among them.
Each member of the accursed group was at a different point along the transformation, but each writhed and contorted in the same exhausting way. As Conall finally reached the spot, he was forced to acknowledge that he too had been making the same wailing noise from a long way off. He had been so deafened by the pain that he had been unaware of his own sounds.
He dragged his misshapen body – part human, part animal – into the circle, then collapsed on the hard ground, hoping that the cold firmness of the soil would infuse him with its unfeeling strength. But it never did.
Soon, he would be howling at the yellow moon, his arch-enemy in the sky. She would simply stare back impassively.
And then, he entered the final, most painful, stage.
Conall’s claws retracted. Inside each of his forepaws, the keratin was transforming into narrow bones. Skin grew around these bones, and fingers were forced back out through the red holes in his newly-forming hands. All the hairs on Conall’s back, stomach, and chest were pulled inside his body. It felt like his entire hide was being attacked by a million needles. This hair would remain hidden inside him until the morning. A new skin – lightly-coloured and smooth – was pushed to the surface. It covered the hairiness of Conall’s own body, becoming his new outer layer. The pointed ears which jutted from the top of his head shrank and disappeared, as if melting into his skull. Within seconds, another pair of ears were moulded, twisting and curling into a helix shape on either side of his head. His face became flatter as the bone in his snout was shattered into many small fragments, each one forcing its way back into his skull. A small, sloping nose appeared where the snout had been. There was a feeling like daggers in the joints of Conall’s hind legs, as the bones splintered and twisted themselves around in the opposite direction, to point forwards. These were his new knees. This crunching and mangling of bones occurred throughout Conall’s whole body – in his forelegs, in his ribs, and in his spine – as his skeleton became that of a stranger. Of a human being. Of a man!
Conall’s life had been upended on a similar night, ten lunar months earlier. The horror had started near the place where he lived with the rest of the wolf pack. A man – an interloper – had leapt out of the shadows as Conall had been walking near the foot of the hill. The moment had terrified him. He had seen men before, and knew them to be savage and dangerous. He had seen them kill, and had heard them laugh as they killed.
The man held a flint knife in his hand. He was clearly hungry, and he smelled bad. But none of this mattered to Conall. He had to protect the pack so, instantly, he lunged at the man. He sank his teeth into the thick part of the man’s hand, between the thumb and the wrist, forcing him to drop his weapon. The man’s blood in Conall’s mouth tasted bad. There was an uncleanness about it. It was not food in the way the other animals of the valley were food.
Releasing the grip of his jaws, Conall leapt up on the man, scraping at the bare chest with his front claws. He barked, spraying warm saliva into the man’s face. The interloper fought back, punching and slapping, his injured hand splashing blood onto Conall’s head. Within seconds, he had managed to push the wolf off him. The man turned and ran back up the hillside. Conall gazed after him, shaking from the shock of the encounter.
He could not have known that this man – this enemy creature – was his own older brother.
Or that this brother carried within him the curse of the moon.
And he could not have known that his brother’s blood had now cursed him.
When Conall returned to the pack that night, his excitement and his fear were evident to the other wolves. They could smell the rank blood in his mouth. Many of them ran towards the edge of the village, and stared out in the direction from which he had come, knowing that whatever danger had affected their pack-member had come from out there.
But, throughout that night, nothing emerged from the darkness.
Not until the following morning.
Before the sun rose, Conall was awoken by a shuffling sound nearby. In the murky greyness, he could see a group of figures approach from the direction of the hills. He didn’t know numbers, so he was unaware that there were five of them. From their scent, he quickly realised that they were wolves – members of his own pack.
Thus, at first, they caused him no alarm.
As they drew nearer, however, he could sense that there was a wrongness about them. Although they smelled like his kind, and from his own family, there was another scent which flared in his nostrils – a scent which marked them as different. As they passed him, Conall could see a strange glow in their iri
ses, and he felt from them a sadness he had never known in wolves before.
He could also see that the biggest of them was limping. There was dry blood on the wolf’s front paw, caked around a set of small holes. He had been wounded by a set of sharp teeth.
As the lunar month progressed, Conall became aware that there were changes taking place in him as well. The round moon was coming, and it was bringing something bad with it. Each fresh night made him sicker. He could feel a grating in his bones and a strain on his muscles. As the nights passed, his body was becoming less familiar to him. He began to feel like a stranger in his own pelt. And he noticed that the other five were all experiencing the same discomforts as himself.
Finally, on the night, a few hours before darkness, his brother had come to him. With a new instinct that he had never felt before, Conall had known what the older wolf had wanted. His mournful gaze told Conall that they were to leave the village together, and travel far away from the others.
That was the night when he first saw the circular area of stone where he now stood, his long bare feet chilled by the night-time soil, his hands dangling by his sides.
The man that he had become knew nothing of who – or what – he was. His entire past seemed to consist of long periods of blackness, broken by occasional bursts of consciousness. He knew that he had experienced dreams, and the vague memory of these dreams said to him that he was really something other than what he appeared. He belonged in this unfamiliar world for only brief stretches of time. This knowledge made him feel like he did not really belong at all.
He looked around the group, unaware that these people – familiar from previous nights – were members of his own family, his brothers and his sisters, sired and birthed from the same two wolves. He sought out the older one, the one who had always felt like the closest to him. But, just like the last few times, the man was not there.