I hit the porch slow and even. Dim lights on inside. Candles? No shapes in the windows. But there was flickering. The TV? A bit of color, it seemed right. I pushed the doorbell. Waited. Forty seconds. Reasonable. I pushed it again. On the phone? On the shitter? Just not going to answer? 35 . . . 36 . . . 37 . . . The door didn’t open. Sometimes when you’re doing hard time you do it the hard way. I kicked it in. I could apologize and throw some cash around later if need pressed me.
All the trappings of the Call of Cthulhu game we’d run through earlier hit me. The place was a cavern of dead souls, of life unmade. Not being a big fan of any kind of horror, I didn’t have the words or the experience to translate all the shit that boiled in this unholy mindfuck ripping at my eyes. Demon faces—masks?—on the walls. And what looked like real human skulls. Posters and diagrams printed in the depths of Hell. There was a stone with a painted goat’s skull on it . . .
Four lightning steps in and I saw him in the dining area that opened on what should be, in any normal house, the living room. He turned—whipped around. Black robes with weird markings, like some haywire wizard from an old horror film. A bloody knife in his hand. A dead boy. Frankie. The boy I was here to save. A dead boy on an old door on two sawhorses. Less than twenty feet from the carnage I could see the child’s torso was ripped wide open. There was a fucking candle burning in his belly were his guts should be.
“What?” Was all the monster got out.
I put the first hollow point in his gut to take him down. He was on his knees. He’d dropped the knife. Six steps. Quick. I was too hot to wait for the kill. I pressed the Glock to his forehead. “Think yer goin’ to some kind of heaven you rotten fuck. Think again, ’cause this is where you get flushed.” And right there he knew it. I doubt his mother had ever told him anything plainer. His lips parted. “Fuck you, Asshole.” Before he could beg, or pray.
Shade was coming out of the kitchen. Shadow out if a bedroom. But it was over. Over. Bloody. Their eyes said it all.
I’ve got a fuckin’ $750 watch and I was late again. All these years later and I was going to see another innocent boy go into a bag. If you think The War’s over, then go fuck yourself! Until we stop putting kids in bags, nothing’s over. Not even close!
We dealt with the cops and the prosecutor. We went in on a hunch and things got messy. Got slapped around. Threatened and bruised. But the Assistant D.A. knew where public opinion would drop once word of the horror scene got around (People may be fucked up these days, but when it came to psycho-fuck cannibals ripping the guts out of babies they probably just defiled, well, give ’em what they gave and then some!)—and there were only two shots—mine—and he had a knife; self-defense pure and simple. And the Assistant D.A. knew my best friend was Toni and her sister was the State Attorney General’s wife. In the end they didn’t even put out a hit out on my P.I. license.
Ten steps up to that door. That sad door. Shade and Shadow stood by the car smoking. They had no words. Feelings, but no words. Toni had her arm in mine. I rang the doorbell and tried to breathe . . .
Her face was older, strained. Eyes red, stained by the smoke and searing heat of the fires of Hell. But it was the same eyes and the same face from all those years ago. And between us . . . there were the screams.
I hugged Kathy. She hugged me back as she cried. This was the second time I failed her. More screams between us. Her tears burned my heart. I hadn’t recovered from the tears she shed for her sister yet and . . . That piece of shit was dead, but that wasn’t good enough. Not even close! Anytime The Devil wants me to sign, I won’t even stop to blink.
There weren’t a lot of words. No need for ’em when you share that pain. Brothers, or families, in arms, in ruin, in tragedy, when Truth comes in in its black boots and kicks you awake, means you all carry the load. And it hurts. Deep as any hell.
Toni summed it up for a reporter after it was over. Some horror writer named Lovecraft, sixty years ago, made up this fictional mythology about terrible monster-gods who were waiting to come back from some unnamed hell and clear the Earth. This Lovecraft had a black bible of poisonous sex magic and blood called the Necronomicon. In it lay the directions to set them free. And this wacko-fuck had taken it to heart and was planning to free them to ravage and ruin. Not in My Town, motherfucker! See this Glock? It knows where you live!
Your wanderings lead you to hurt a woman or a child. I don’t blink.
(this one’s for Stan & Jack & the FF! Make Mine MARVEL!!)
Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., is the author of the novels, The Orphan Palace and Nightmare’s Disciple, and he has written many short stories that have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including “Weird Fiction Review”, “Crypt of Cthulhu”, and “Lovecraft eZine”, Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, S. T. Joshi’s Black Wings (I and III), Book of Cthulhu and Tales of Jack the Ripper, The Starry Wisdom Library, and The Children of Old Leech. His short story collections, Blood Will Have Its Season, SIN & ashes, and Portraits of Ruin, were published by Hippocampus Press.
He edited A Season in Carcosa and The Grimscribe’s Puppets (Miskatonic River Press), and Ann K. Schwader’s The Worms Remember.
He is at work on two new mixed-genre collections of weird fiction, Stained Translations (Hippocampus Press 2014), and The Protocols of Ugliness, both edited by Jeffrey Thomas, and the upcoming anthologies, Cassilda’s Song and The Leaves of a Necronomicon (both Chaosium 2015).
You can find him online at: http://thisyellowmadness.wordpress.com/
Story illustration by Peter Szmer
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The Shadow Under Scotland
by Cameron Johnston
Morag rammed her dirk into the tabletop and rose to glower down at the wiry old man in highland plaid opposite. His bushy beard quivered with anger, hand dropping to the basket-hilted broadsword at his hip.
In the sudden silence a burning log cracked and shifted in the fireplace, spraying a cloud of sparks into the Gloaming Inn's front room.
Her calloused hand slammed down and she leaned forward to look him in the eye. Weather-beaten and hardened by toil, she was well-used to handling her unruly flock, and bending this skinny old fool over her knee would pose no problem.
"You're a lying swine, Ewan MacDonald," she said. "And if you draw that sword I’ll take it off you and spank you with it. Still sore I wouldn't marry you, eh?"
He scowled, hand switching to adjust his plaids. The length of finest wool wrapped around his waist and pinned over his shoulder had been enough to suit the barrel-chested Ewan of thirty years ago, but now it just made the old fool seem lost amongst all that cloth.
"I don't have your damned sheep, you thieving slattern,” he roared, spittle flying. “And just where have my cows gone? You tell me that! Did the faeries spirit them away during yesterday’s storm? I might be old, but I'll be damned if I let an ugly old boot of a woman talk to me this way. I must have been mad to consider you."
Just as it seemed likely they would come to blows, from behind the bar Big John noisily cleared his throat. The hulking bald innkeeper stared at the knife buried in his table. "Are you going to pay for that then, Morag?"
She flushed, shot the smug-faced Ewan a look of distilled death, then wrenched the dirk from the wood. "Aye, I will."
Big John glowered at them both like they were unruly children. "If you are going to have a stramash then you take it outside. I won't be clearing up blood and teeth, I can tell you that for--"
The front door slammed open.
Chill evening air gusted in as Calum Cameron staggered through, scarred face white as a sheet, a blood-drenched young Bessie Stewart looking as lifeless as a rag doll in his arms.
Morag gasped. “Lay the lass down on the table.” Calum set her down and she checked the girl’s pulse while he slumped into a chair, panting for breath.
Big John reached under his counter, pulled out a cup and bottle of whisky, then limped over, wincing with every step, to set it
down in front of Calum and pour out a big dram.
Calum gulped the alcohol down in a single swallow, coughing as it burned a trail down his throat. "I was visiting my mam’s grave up at the auld kirk," he said. "Found Bessie atop what was left of St Columba’s cross. It must have cracked and fallen during yesterday's storm. There’s...blood all over the churchyard.” He fished out a red knotted cord from beneath his shirt, his mother's old charm against the evil eye. He held onto it for dear life and crossed himself for good measure.
Morag loosened the thong around Bessie's neck that held a cheap iron cross. She pressed an ear to the girl’s chest, then checked her all over. “Not a scratch on her. Just fainted, is all.”
Calum loosed a shuddering sigh. “Thank the Lord for that. I saw all that blood and thought the worst.”
Ewan put a hand on Calum’s shoulder. “What the devil happened up there?”
Calum shook his head. “If it’s not the girl’s blood, then what about the priest?” His eyes widened. “Wait, didn’t the lass birth a wee babe just two months back? She’d surely not have left him behind.”
Big John shivered. “You don’t think--”
“Don’t say it, man,” Morag interrupted. “Not until we know one way or the other.”
A grim mood descended. Calum stood, charm still clutched in his shaking hand. “Best we head on up there, then. John, I never thought I'd have to say this, but..." He stared longingly at the bottle of whisky.
"I need my sword back."
Big John limped over to the back wall, unlocked the store room and began rummaging about inside. A minute later he came back with a long oilcloth bundle, dumped it down and cut the twine to reveal two basket-hilted broadswords in battered leather sheaths.
Calum slipped his hand into the steel guard of one of the broadswords, drew it and held it up to the light. He took a few practice swings. His arm seemed to remember the ways to kill a man all too easily. He stared at his old sword with obvious mixed feelings. Morag knew more than one man had died on that blade when the village men had signed up to fight the Border Reivers. That could not be an easy thing to face again.
Ewan drew his own sword, trying to look like he knew what he was doing, and failing. He licked his lips nervously. “Well, laddie, best we head off before night falls.”
Morag picked up the second sword. It felt lighter in her hand than killing steel had any right to be. She threw a few practice cuts, succeeding in putting Ewan to shame. Her late husband had been a fierce swordsman, before the pox claimed him. “Big John’s gout is flaring up,” she said. “So he can stay back and look after Bessie. You’ll not be going up there without me.”
She stared defiantly at Ewan as he opened his mouth to object. Then he closed it, shrugged, and said, “Aye, I expect we won’t."
“Best bar the doors until we get back,” she said.
Big John leant back behind his counter and pulled out an iron-bound club. “Nobody will be getting past me. You be taking care of yourself, now.”
She snorted. “Any robber that lays a hand on me will find himself a gelding.”
The auld kirk that crouched atop the peak of the hill had been there longer than anybody knew, far longer than the village. It was a squat, ugly building, its insides carved all over with ancient images worn away to near-illegibility. The new priest, Father Ainsley, had been getting Bessie to sweep the place out and lay fresh heather every week before services, and lately it had seemed to lose some of its ill-favoured aspect. By the time they had climbed high enough to see it silhouetted against the dusky sky, Ewan was red-faced and puffing. The moon was full, yellow-tinged like old wax, and twilight gifted the purple heathered hills an otherworldly air.
The crosspiece of the old Celtic cross lay flat on the grass, splintered stump still jutting from blackened earth. Local legend said that the cross had been carved by St Columba's own two hands just before he'd headed off up the great glen and down the river Ness to rebuke the loathsome beast o' the loch. The grass was charred in a circle five paces wide around the fallen cross.
"Lightning, maybe," Ewan said.
A squealing noise from inside the old church. They spun, blades lifting, and crept towards the kirk. A feeling of being watched raised goose bumps on Morag’s arms, but the hill was deserted, just wind, grass, sheep droppings, and withered gorse bush for company. The old oak door was splintered and hanging from a single hinge. It squealed with each gust of wind. But that wasn't the relief it should have been - dried blood and stinking gobbets of flesh had spattered across the doorway.
The hall had been ripped apart. Pews lay in splintered piles, crosses broken, cushions torn and bleeding feathers. Shredded brown-stained pages of the Holy Bible swirled in the breeze like a flock of carrion birds over pools of gore. The church silver lay untouched -- and unstolen -- in the ruins of the pulpit.
Morag crossed herself. "Who, or what, could have done this black deed?
“Wolves?" Ewan suggested, staring at the silver.
"The Devil's work, so it is," Calum replied.
Morag pointed to a rust-red stain that smeared up the aisle to the altar stone tumbled onto its side, then disappeared into a black space beneath.
“Looks like some sort of crypt,” Ewan said.
Morag found the church candles in an alcove behind the altar and recovered the priest’s flint and tinder box from the piles of debris. She sparked a fire, then handed them a fat candle each. They peered down into the gap. Narrow stone stairs descended into darkness, crudely cut from the solid rock beneath the kirk.
Calum edged away from the steps. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Ewan snorted. “Superstitious fool. A couple of starved brigands have taken root down there. Or a madman, perhaps. I say we go down and flush them out."
"Fine," Calum said. "Don't listen to me then." He stepped back, swung out an inviting arm. "Be my guest."
Ewan hesitated, but found himself caught by his own pride. He led the way as they descended in silence, step by careful step deep into the bones of the hill for what seemed like an age, the only sound the drip, drip, drip of water and the scuff of boot on stone. Niches hacked into the rock held grinning human skulls, but they quickly realised that the steps went far too deep for any crypt. Finally Ewan stumbled to a stop, the rhythm of descent broken by solid stone floor underfoot.
A moist, warm breeze waxed and waned from somewhere ahead, caressing their faces like some sleeping giant's breath. It reeked like a stagnant pond choked with weed, one long since gone to mould and rot. Deeper darkness lurked beyond an archway carved all over with leering grotesque faces, each with a single staring eye where there should be two. Man-sized footprints crossed the dusty floor through the arch and then returned. A set of smaller prints made by bare feet followed the tracks.
Morag squatted down to examine the prints. "I'd say the smaller ones are more recent. A woman or a youngster.”
They moved onwards, finding themselves in a large, natural cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites glistened in the candlelight, giving Morag the disquieting image of being inside some great beast's maw. A pit gaped in the centre of the cavern, torn spider webs and trailing slimy moss shivering in the warm air that welled up from its black depths. Rubble and rotted wood circled the pit, and the rusted remnants of an iron grate lay off to one side.
Morag padded over. She carefully set down her candle and picked up a piece of carved stone the size of her hand. The dust around it was covered in boot prints. She ran her fingertips over the carvings, discovered bright edges from a fresh breakage.
"Looks like part of a cross," she said. "A smaller copy of St Columba's above.”
A metallic glint from the stone caught Morag's eye. She looked closer, scratched at the break with a dirty fingernail. "It has iron running through it. A queer sort of stone, this." She looked up to see Ewan and Calum staring at the walls beyond the pit.
The chamber's walls had been carved and painted with a riot of symbols and
images. Many were recognisably Christian but others seemed to be older pagan images and symbols. They hurt the eye, somehow seemed unsettling, unwholesome even. The Christian crosses overlaid the older cracked and faded images, and some areas of the wall had been gouged out entirely by hammer and chisel.
Morag dropped the fragment of cross, then ran her fingers down a series of lines incised into the wall. She'd seen old Pictish standing stones carved with similar lines and images - an ancient dead language, some said. The paintings showed howling horse-headed kelpies dragging men below churning waters, and a sequence showed a dragon chasing down a group of people, then gulping them down its gullet. A stranger image still showed a one-eyed, wizened crone climbing from, or into, a well with a pair of babies clutched in the crook of her skeletal arms.
“This is no damn crypt,” Calum hissed. “We’re in a faerie mound or a bloody pagan temple.”
“What rot,” Ewan said. “I grant its oddness, but that’s just peasant superstition. What else could it be?”
Calum barked a laugh. “Are you blind? It’s the old gods and the old ways. Look at the walls, man! This is where a cult tore out men’s hearts, and sacrificed babies to dread gods.”
Ewan sneered, opened his mouth to reply--
A shrill cry echoed up from the pit, drawing all eyes to the slick, dark hole.
“What was that?” Calum whispered.
The reek of rot washed up from the pit with the rhythmic exhalation of moist, warmer air. In the feeble candlelight, the bottom was barely visible. It was no pit in truth, but the opening to another cave leading deeper still into the earth. They exchanged glances, then scanned the surrounding darkness.
A baby’s unmistakable cry wailed up from the depths.
"We can't let the old stories scare us into believing in Bogles and Redcaps," Morag said. “And I know the lore as well as any." Her words said one thing, but she suspected her pale face showed another. She sat, slipping her legs over the edge of the pit. "Lower me down.” She clamped the broadsword between her teeth, freeing her hands for Ewan and Calum to grab hold of. The men's faces grew red with strain as they eased her down into the pit - she was no skinny little slip of a girl.
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