The Dark Yule

by R. M. Callahan

  Cinnamon was beside me now, and Dot and Libby stood close behind. I spotted a conjoined row of red-banded stalagmites only six or seven body-lengths from the stairwell, which I thought might do to conceal us from the cloaked ones. Just as I’d nearly decided to attempt the dash—had, indeed, lifted the first paw—I became quite glad I hadn’t.

  The whole procession had been utterly silent throughout the night. Now, for the first time in ages, I heard sound: the thin whining of some nasal flute, rising and falling in trilling echoes that shivered through my guts. I jumped, we all jumped, and if I’d been in the open, that damned piping might have startled me into betraying our presence.

  We waited, then, for quite a long time in the stairwell. The flute piped on and on, following no recognizable melody that I could hear; it never seemed to repeat itself, just continuously quavered out those spine-tingling notes. No other sound came, and at long last I ventured to steal out from the stairwell, slinking low across that noxious, fungal floor. A dozen swift steps secured me behind the stalagmites, and there I could crouch in near-perfect secrecy, with a full view of the proceedings. Seeing my success, the others swiftly joined me, and took up their own positions along the row.

  Together, in aghast silence, we observed the ancient rites of the Dark Yule.

  12

  Gibbering

  The first thing I beheld was a vast tower of green flame, flaring upward from a deep crevice in the rocky floor, and casting its sickly light throughout the cavern. Despite the fire’s size, though, I didn’t feel any warmth from that direction—it seemed the eerie, emerald flames produced no actual heat. Behind this bizarre fountain of fire, there was a river: wide, black, and oily. It wound slowly from the far right side of the cavern, and eventually disappeared in a dark, yawning tunnel in the left wall. It was in front of this river, facing the green fire, that the cloaked ones had finally ended their midnight pilgrimage.

  We had evidently missed the earliest part of the rite, for just one or two cowled figures still tossed handfuls of squamous green fungus into that cold, blazing pillar. They bowed after making their peculiar offering, and joined their fellows, who stood in a semicircle around the spouting flames. Only one remained beside the fire, and faced his fellow worshippers. He lowered his cowl, and I beheld the old man, and his peculiarly lifelike mask.

  What followed was the oddest church service I’ve ever encountered. It was conducted in utter silence, save for the continued droning and fluttering of that nasal-sounding flute. I tried to trace the sound to its source, but could only perceive a squat shadow perched some distance from the flame, barely visible even to my eyes. It didn’t appear to be human, that much alone could be said.

  It was easy to identify our two modern men, even in the midst of identical cloaks and hoods, because they were always one or two beats behind the movements of the service. Periodically the old man would hold up his ancient, moldy-looking tome, and the worshippers would bow. Sometimes they bent from the waist, and sometimes they went all the way down to touch their foreheads to the floor. With no sound or word to guide them, it was no wonder that the occultists were out of rhythm. Once, all the cloaked figures cast themselves utterly prone upon the nasty fungal carpet; by the time the two occultists got on their stomachs, the others had already begun to rise.

  I was becoming, frankly, rather bored with these speechless proceedings, when the old man raised his hand. At once, the flute changed key—if anything, to something more obnoxious—and I heard the dim echo of far-distant flutterings. My ears swiveled frantically, trying to discern from where the noises came. Eventually I fixed upon the black, chasmal tunnel to our left, into which the equally black river flowed. Closer and closer the sounds approached, ascending the tunnel from who knew what Stygian pits. All at once I recognized the awful beat of membranous wings.

  “Night-gaunts!” I hissed with horror—just as an entire flock burst from the tunnel.

  Neil and Rob ducked as the ghastly creatures circled overhead, their wings flapping madly in the windless cavern, their clawed hind-legs dangling. Again the old man raised his hand in an unspoken signal, the flute ceased, and the night-gaunts began to descend. Each faceless monster crouched beside a cowled figure, and each cowled figure climbed upon the beast’s back, straddling its bony spine between the two pairs of bat-like wings. With a mighty effort the night-gaunts launched themselves once again into the air, and streamed around the vast pillar of fire, to plunge back into the unseen depths of the tunnel.

  All of them, that is, except for six. These night-gaunts had been waved away by their masters, and had resumed their flight unencumbered. Rather than rejoining their kin in the tunnel, they flapped hither and thither in the cavern, their great wings casting alarming shadows in the light of the emerald flame. As I watched their erratic airborne wanderings, I noted that the inhuman flute player appeared to have vanished. To where, and how, I couldn’t possibly say.

  Six night-gaunts remained—but there were eight cowled figures, for Neil and Rob were among them. The old man, his life-like mask smiling as blandly as ever, gestured for the two to lower their hoods. This seemed to alarm Neil, who kept trying to look discreetly behind himself, where several other silent, cloaked persons waited. As for Rob, the green light illuminated clearly his desperate expression, as he sent longing glances down the tunnel, where all the others had flown on their nightmarish steeds.

  Let us go, too, Rob pleaded with the old man, gesturing toward the tunnel. There followed a long and, I gathered, rather flowery speech, for I sensed little meaning in it save the endless repetition of Rob’s desire.

  The old man showed no signs of being swayed—or even of listening. He was engaged in pulling strange objects from beneath his voluminous cloak, and setting them upon a nearby flat-topped boulder. It appeared the boulder had served as an altar before, for its smooth, polished surface was clearly artificial, and I spotted driblets of colored wax dried upon its sides. A second cloaked person, using a walking stick, scraped a large circle into the sand and fungus of the cavern’s floor. A third poured liquid from a flask into a vast silver goblet, which was twice the size of any normal chalice, and heavily engraved with symbols I could not quite decipher.

  The old man, having laid out his tools, gestured Neil and Rob toward the middle of the drawn circle. Rob strode forward without hesitation, and assumed his place proudly. His more cowardly—or perhaps wiser—friend entered the circle slowly. He took a somewhat circuitous route to do so, too, and moved rather nearer the altar than was necessary. I suspected him of trying to sneak a peek at the objects placed thereon, and I believe the old man thought the same. In response, the old man took a single, small step toward the altar; this was enough to send Neil scurrying into the circle, where he stood meekly beside Rob, his hands tightly clasped.

  Once the two stood in the center, facing the old man and his altar, the remaining five hooded figures moved to different points along the circle. They were clearly taking deliberate positions, yet the spacing seemed highly uneven to me—or perhaps it followed an unfamiliar geometry.

  With gestures, the old man signaled that the two occultists should drink from the goblet. Rob did so with an air of drama, cupping the large bowl between his palms and gulping deeply—I could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. He sighed audibly as he passed the goblet to Neil, and ostentatiously dabbed the reddish liquid from his lips, a gesture that could not conceal his self-satisfied smirk. Neil, by contrast, took a much hastier drink. When he lowered the goblet, it seemed evident that more had gone on his scrubby beard than down his throat.

  If the old man took issue with Neil’s half-hearted effort, however, he showed no sign. He merely retrieved the massive silver cup, cradling the bowl carefully within his black gloves, to deposit it lovingly upon the stone altar. Next, he selected a thin wooden wand, carved from elder if I was any judge. He gestured for the occultists to kneel; when they had, he proceeded to make many signs in the air above them. Though it
was difficult to discern the wand’s airy tracings, I shuddered to recognize some foul Marks indeed, ones I’d only seen carved upon the walls of mouldering temples, in the more desolate lands of dream.

  Now he silently bade them to remove their cloaks, and then their shirts—indicating all this with coaxing hand gestures, for of course that bland mask never moved. Rob flung his plain white T-shirt outside the circle with a flourish. Bare-chested, he again knelt before the old man, clasped his hands with reverence, and closed his eyes. He appeared to anticipate some kind of baptism.

  “Hah. Lambs to the slaughter,” Dot muttered beside me. Her back was arched so high, she stood nearly on her claws; it was only when I observed her that I realized I was doing the same. It took no small effort to ease my back down, and then to force my hindquarters to rest upon that soft, odorous fungus. Only when I was sufficiently relaxed did I again allow myself to peer between the stalagmites.

  By then, Neil was fumbling at his own shirt, peeling it slowly up from his soft, hairy stomach. I doubted his hesitation to strip was due either to cold or to modesty (a peculiar human concept, anyway). Judging by his many darting glances in all directions, and the great reluctance with which he went down, at last, upon his knees, he obviously wasn’t prepared for anything as innocuous as a blessing. I rather thought his expectations came nearer to the truth than Rob’s.

  Despite everything, I felt sorry for them—sorry for the tall, handsome young man with his hands pressed together in ecstatic prayer, and even sorrier for his wiser friend. As the old man raised his hands to the ceiling in silent invocation, I felt certain their doom was upon them.

  After all our investigations, after all the risks we’d run, had we uncovered a pair of black-hearted villains, intent upon destroying the innocent? No. We’d stumbled on a couple of idiots, who’d taken their youthful dabbling in black magic a little too earnestly. Surely now they would pay the price, for venturing into the Mysteries too far, too fast—and then, that would be the end. Unless…

  Unless this wasn’t a sacrifice, as I’d presumed it to be. Just what was the purpose of this ritual, anyway? Were they truly about to be initiated into this faceless, voiceless group of worshippers? That I rather doubted. But many possibilities lay between warm-hearted welcome and brutal murder.

  The old man lowered his hands. It was difficult to tell, given the fixed features of the well-carved mask, but I thought he studied the half-naked youths who knelt before him. For a moment, I envisioned myself in his place: I, too, stared at them with calculating eyes. Young idiots, indeed, but from another time, and another Kingsport. And to that other, future Kingsport they would return, when the Dark Yule was finished, and the sun rose to illuminate its slightly lengthier day.

  The kitten, Bug, had said that the Dark Yule’s effects generally ended at dawn. But the consequences of this ritual—those might not end with first light. Whatever was done to Neil and Rob, whatever this peculiar ceremony entailed, the two of them might not leave it here, in this haunted time and space. They might carry it back to their own time. My own time.

  Then the Dark Yule would not be restricted to a new moon on the winter solstice, and to a strange pilgrimage enacted in this alien Kingsport. Something of it would return with these two occultists, and take up residence among us. In what precise fashion, I could not say—but when this ritual finally finished, then surely we’d know the form of our doom.

  If the ritual finished. My eye followed a crooked line of stalagmites that ran from our shelter toward the river.

  “We need to stop this,” I told them. “Before it’s too late.”

  “What?” Libby demanded. “Why?”

  I didn’t wait, nor did I explain. I feared there wasn’t time. Instead, I bounded forward, moving along the route I’d already mentally traced, trotting swiftly when the rocks shielded me from view, and slinking slowly across that disgusting, hairy fungal floor when they did not.

  The old man raised his hands to the heavens twice more, making a total of three speechless appeals. Then he turned, reaching for the ancient, evil-smelling book he’d rested on the altar—

  And saw me sitting upon it.

  We stared at each other. He was as frozen in motion as the features of his mask, which I could see now was carved from wax. I, for my part, did my best impression of a Bastet statue, and fixed him with an imperious eye.

  Then—slowly, deliberately—I stretched out a paw, and knocked the silver goblet off the altar.

  A red liquid, too thick to be wine, splashed onto the dark, oily sand of the river’s shore. The old man looked from me, to it, and then back to me again.

  Kitty? Neil murmured. He sounded incredulous. I didn’t blame him. I couldn’t believe I was there, either.

  The old man plunged his hand into his robes. Moving more swiftly than I would have thought possible, he withdrew a knife from his cloak, and lunged toward me, the glinting blade upraised. In the same moment, though, I sprang toward him, aiming directly for that terribly life-like mask.

  Have you ever taken a Maine Coon to the face? It was a wonder the old man didn’t collapse; he merely staggered backward a few steps, while my claws sank deep into the mask’s stiffened wax. There was nothing to hold onto, and I was sliding down, so I twisted to the side, taking the mask with me.

  I felt him seize my tail, halting my descent. As my full body weight descended upon my tail, I howled at the pain, and clawed madly at every scrap of black cloak I would reach. A miracle—I was free, and falling once more. I even managed to land on my feet, amidst a spray of oversized, white, squirming maggots.

  Yes, that’s right: maggots. I blinked at the writhing creatures, which wriggled out from beneath the ruins of the mask. Tickling along my back, on my head, in my ear—they were all over me! Giving way to instinct, I yowled and bolted, shaking myself as I ran to be rid of the horrible things. I didn’t stop until I’d almost reached the stalagmites, when I couldn’t resist pausing to twist round and bite a particularly wiggly specimen out of my back fur.

  Wait a moment. Where was my tail?

  Over my shoulder, I saw the old man clutching his bloodied knife in one hand. In the other hand he held my tail—my beautiful, fluffy, plumed tail—aloft in triumph.

  The next thing I noticed was that he had no face, only a squirming mass of maggots where a face should be.

  Throwing my poor tail violently to the ground, the vile creature whipped back to the occultists in the center. Neil shrieked his heart out at the sight, as well he might, and crawled away blubbering on his hands and knees. The other cowled figures stepped forward menacingly, halting his flight, and he cowered at the very edge of the circle.

  The tall, wormy-faced being swayed in the direction of Rob, who stared open-mouthed, but had not yet made a move to flee. It stretched a gloved hand toward the dark youth, showing more white maggots crawling where the black glove didn’t quite meet the cloak’s black sleeve. The figure reached, and reached…then collapsed outward in a shower of the vile worms, which coated Rob’s dark curly hair, his chiseled face, and his bare, hairy chest.

  Rob’s eyes rolled back into his head, showing only the white. He collapsed upon his face with a shrill scream, which was immediately echoed by his friend. Then, over the human wailing, I heard a gladdening sound indeed: the sharp, warbling yowl of a truly furious cat.

  “Give her tail back!” Libby shrieked, springing from behind a stalagmite. Upon his heels were Dot and Cinnamon. As one they launched themselves upon the nearest cloaked figure, who reeled under their combined weight. Tripping upon the hem of his own cloak, the cultist went down. The hood fell back, exposing another maggoty mass. Libby shrieked again and jumped sideways, his back arched, his tall as stiff as a poker. It was good he did, for the cowled one beside him had aimed a blow with a dagger, and missed him by only a hair.

  The measly stump of my tail throbbed maddeningly, and my poor head spun, but I wasn’t dying yet—a cat always knows. So I turned round and raced back i
nto battle, sinking my claws into the flying hem of the nearest cloak. Yanking it sideways, I toppled another mass of maggots, which exploded forth from the concealing hood. This particular fellow remained coherent enough to reached a gloved hand toward me, but Dot was upon it at once, sinking her teeth deep into the leather and shaking the whole thing like a rat. With no bone or skin to hold it together, the entire arm—if it could be called that—dissolved into individual, squirming worms.

  Help! I heard Neil cry. I wheeled about, fangs bared, to see the poor fellow with a knife at his throat. This wouldn’t have surprised me, save that the knife’s wielder was Rob. Or was it? The dark, curly hair and fine frame were the same, and yet—

  Come, my love, he called. Come enjoy true flesh again. We can ride these boys all the way into the future. Quickly!

  Icy clarity descended, freezing me where I stood. These beings were not maggots, but merely possessed them. The spirit that inhabited the worms was capable of being transferred, and had already been so, in the case of the old man and his foolish, would-be devotee.

  A hunched figure shuffled forward, and lowered her hood to reveal the old woman. Her face, too, was a mask, and I wouldn’t have taken any bets as to what lay behind it. Neil sobbed hysterically with fear at the sight of her plain, slightly-smiling wax face, and twisted ineffectually in his stronger friend’s grip. A reek of urine hung in the air; a dark stain spread across the crotch of his trousers. His sobs turned to a scream when she removed her mask; really, I could hardly blame him.

  But I wasn’t really looking at them, I was looking past them, to the black river that oozed just beyond the bounds of the circle. There I could barely discern the floating end of a cloak, which rippled for just an instant upon the surface of the river, before being sucked down into the depths.

  Just how many of the cowled ones were left? The old woman, advancing upon the piddling, weeping Neil: that was all. Libby and the others had eliminated one maggoty creature, while Dot and myself had destroyed another. So what had become of the other two?