The Dark Yule

by R. M. Callahan

  There! That flash of yellow, in the murky ripples: was that the gleam of a lamp-like eye?

  I looked from the oily waters to the tragedy unfolding before me. Rob’s handsome, slightly arrogant face remained the same, yet was also, somehow, indescribably different. A new cunning glittered in those large, dark eyes, while his white teeth were bared in a smile that lacked all warmth. The knife pressed ever deeper into the soft folds of Neil’s neck; with each pathetic whimper, Rob’s smile grew larger, until his lips stretched farther than any human’s should, a sight that made me bare my own fangs.

  Was there anything left of Rob in there, or was it all the wicked old wizard? It was impossible to say—and I wouldn’t wait to find out. I knew we cats might be able to knock a few towers of worms about, but a wizard possessing a fine young body—that we couldn’t hope to best. At least, not by ourselves. And if we didn’t kill this creature, this monstrosity, this death-defying thing before dawn, then by sunrise we’d be battling it in our own time, with so much more to lose…

  Decision made, I launched into action. With a war-cry of my own (not a patch on Libby’s, I’m afraid), I flung myself at the tall occultist, and proceeded to single-mindedly shred his legs from groin to ankle. I admit I thoroughly enjoyed the feel of his yielding flesh beneath my claws, the smell of his tainted blood, the exciting riiiip of tearing cloth. He yelled and kicked and stomped, missing my nimble paws with his boots by only a hair, but his hands were busy restraining Neil, and he couldn’t halt the attack.

  At last I sank my claws in that particularly tender place, and his cry of rage echoed from all the cavern’s stone surfaces. Violently he shoved Neil toward the shuffling old woman, and rounded upon me, the long knife upraised. I dashed at once to the river—that disgusting, foul-smelling river—and made the ultimate cat sacrifice:

  I jumped in the water.

  The water didn’t so much splash as plop. My head went briefly under, and the remnants of my tail burned as nasty water washed over the open wound. I resurfaced already sucking for air and struggling to keep afloat, my heavy coat for once doing me no favors. I did manage to turn my head, though, and watched the occultist wade in after me, fixed fury making a new mask of his face. I couldn’t possibly paddle quickly enough to escape his broad strides.

  If I was wrong, I was dead. If I was right, I might still be dead—but he would be, too.

  A long, agonizing moment of panting, and paddling, and waiting ensued. Closer and closer he waded. I tried to swim away, but my paws just flailed through the water with nightmarish inefficiency. He was standing over me, that queer smile on his face, the knife still upraised. He was stretching out to seize me in his powerful, possessed hand.

  A slimy thing brushed my paw. Just a touch.

  Then, something that was neither man nor fish launched straight up out of the shallows, sending the black water flying. The green-skinned creature seized Rob’s neck with webbed, clawed hands, lifted him briefly up, and proceeded to slam him downwards, thrusting him beneath the waves with a mighty splash. The occultist’s feet kicked and lashed through the waters, while his fingers, hooked into claws, scratched madly at the green one’s finned arms. In a moment, there was so much violent thrashing taking place I could no longer observe the scene. I could only glimpse the Deep One’s dead-fish eyes, which gleamed yellow even in the sickly light of the emerald flame.

  Gagging on the foul water, still paddling madly, I lifted my head and struggled toward the shore. I saw Neil wrestling violently with the old woman. Libby had climbed halfway up her cloak, and Cinnamon launched herself at the old woman’s rippling skirts, but it was too late. Her body dissolved, spraying maggots outward, which coated the occultist’s half-naked form from head to toe—just like they had his friend.

  No! Noooooo! the poor man shrieked. He twisted round, and sprinted madly. At first I thought he merely careened blindly, but then I observed him deliberately change course, white worms still flying off his clothing, skin, and hair. He made straight for the mighty pillar of fire, without wavering, without hesitation. At the edge of the crevice, he did not pause, but leapt through the noxious flames.

  The green fire put out no heat, that I’d noted from the beginning; yet upon contact, the pillar immediately set him alight, faster than any mortal fire. He passed through the pillar and landed on the other side, reeling, his hair blazing chartreuse, his pants smoldering olive smoke. On he stumbled, and fell into the river. A great cloud of steam arose, concealing him from view. I coughed as the hot steam roiled toward me, and swallowed yet another mouthful of disgusting water.

  When the steam cleared a little, though, I was astounded to glimpse, not a burnt, blackened corpse, but Neil’s intact body floating easily upon the river’s buoyant surface. Eyes closed, mouth gaping, the poor soul slid headfirst down the dark tunnel, slowly disappearing from view.

  Was he dead? Or merely unconscious? With a great effort I paddled closer, trying to determine which could be the case. As I neared the dark tunnel, however, a colder, swifter current suddenly seized me, speeding me toward the yawning entrance.

  At once I fought it, turning toward shore and swimming with all my might. My heavy coat was dragging me down, though, and all the splashing and steam had left me half-choked. Relentlessly the current towed me toward the tunnel, pulling me faster and faster, until I perceived, with terror, the dark roof pass over my head.

  Now the entrance was a half-circle of greenish light, growing smaller and smaller in the distance. All around me, I could discern nothing but darkness, endless darkness without relief. There was no shore to clamber onto, no boulder or branch to halt my passage. My paws passed through unsupportive water, again and again, while my head sank lower and lower. The river roared in my ears, and the tunnel’s entrance was no more than a dim green dot far, far away.

  I could swim no longer. I was going down.

  I got a last gasp of air before my nose sank beneath the surface. I closed my eyes, and pointlessly willed myself to sleep. It was useless—the dreamlands had never been further from me.

  Instead I focused inward, and watched my soul begin its long unraveling.

  * * *

  Light! Air! I gasped and blinked and choked, as a firm hand pounded my back. I was alive, after all. The mouth of the tunnel was still before me, taunting me with its nearness, with the possibility of escape. It took me a long moment to realize that the half-moon of light was increasing in size, not decreasing; I was coming closer to salvation, not floating further from it.

  At the same time, I became conscious that I was no longer in the water, but being cradled in a somewhat squashy arm, against a rather spongy chest, all of which fairly reeked of delicious fish. It was an actual struggle for me not to try and take a bite, so much did the smell resembled Dot’s mouth-watering canned sardines.

  The back pounding continued. I spat up more water, and at last got something like a proper lungful of air, though I was still too weak—and bewildered—to move. I did manage a little mrow, though, as the Deep One (what else could it be?) carried me back to the blessed, blessed light.

  “Spice!” Libby caterwauled, racing along the bank as I emerged from the tunnel. “Are you all right?”

  I coughed in response, and got more solid whacks on the spine for it. I had to mrow again to make the thing stop.

  The Deep One who carried me waded toward shore, passing close by his companion, the one who’d attacked Rob. That Deep One appeared to still be holding Rob underwater, though by now Rob’s hands drifted lifelessly across the surface of the river, and his feet no longer kicked. I was pleased that the water was opaque enough not to reveal more of the corpse.

  Without any further ado, the Deep One deposited me on the bank, a sodden, humbled mess of a cat. Shivering like mad, I limped around to face my savior.

  This was the first good look I’d gotten at a Deep One, and I’m sorry to say they were just as ugly as I’d always presumed: their flat, noseless faces and dead-fish eyes
combined the worst aspects of human and piscine features. It was hard to say whether they were more amphibian or fish-like, overall. The rubbery, slimy skin and generally fleshy surface of the Deep One was distinctly froggy, but the transparent fins that fluttered along his forearms, and the scattering of iridescent scales across his shoulders and back, fell more on the fish end of the scale.

  This one blinked at me, his white eyelids meeting vertically across his staring yellow eyes, and opened his mouth wide, to emit strange gurgles. I was so fixated upon the mouthful of needle-sharp teeth, I paid no attention to the bizarre noises.

  “Spice, are you ok?” Dot asked, slinking toward me, her wary eyes fixed upon the Deep One.

  “It’s talking to you, Spice,” Libby remarked with awe.

  I realized that it was, and with an effort concentrated on the guttural, gulping sounds, trying to discern the creature’s meaning. Alas, it was no use. I couldn’t make out a single word. I flattened my ears sadly and slowly blinked, trying to communicate back in feline fashion: “I’m sorry, I don’t understand, but thank you.”

  The Deep One reached for me. I winced, but managed not to duck, as its slimy, webbed hand patted me on the head. Then it hooked a finger beneath my jaw and, very gently, scratched. It was just the right place for a cat, and I was shocked the creature somehow knew that. In my surprise, a little trickle of a purr emerged. The toothy, lipless mouth stretched in a grimace that might have been a smile.

  The Deep One engaged in drowning Rob waded over to join us; it still clutched the occultist’s now-floppy wrist, I noted, and was dragging the body with it beneath the waves. A third Deep One arose from the depths and joined them. They held a conference of some kind, while we cats retreated a little up the beach and held our own. It consisted mostly of the others licking me vigorously, and making smart remarks about how bad I tasted, and how stupid I looked with no tail.

  We were all still in the vital process of grooming when the first Deep One lugged himself out of the river. Flat feet flapping upon the fungus-covered rock, he (it was now obviously a he) approached us. Though wary, we watched him kneel down upon the white, fluffy carpet, and open his webbed hand to display what rested in his fleshy, oozing palm.

  What he held was a beautiful piece of gold-work, the loveliest I’d seen in any lifetime. It appeared to be a heavy bangle, shaped by the goldsmith’s art into the delicate forms of coral, then carved with perfect renditions of tiny, scaled fish, and embedded with chips of an opalescent stone.

  The Deep One gestured to me. I rose, and held my head high, as he fastened the bracelet around my neck. It fit perfectly, though I admit it was heavy. No insubstantial bit of plating, this—it had to be solid gold.

  The Deep One ducked his head to me, and I dipped my head in return. This seemed to please him, and I was treated to another toothy grimace. Then he rose and flapped his way back to the river. A graceless, gruesome figure on land, once he dove back into the oily waters, he was nothing more than a sleek, fast-moving streak. His companions also ducked below the surface and jetted off, just swift shadows moving upriver, and soon gone from our view entirely.

  Not so Rob. Abandoned by his killer, his body at last bobbed to the surface. It lay face-down, with the arms extended overhead, as if at any moment it might begin swimming once more. I admit I watched it for a long, nervous moment, somehow expecting that curly head to raise itself, dripping, from the water, and bare its teeth in that vicious smile.

  But all the corpse did was began to drift, with agonizing slowness, toward the tunnel entrance. There it would join the corpse of Neil, who, if not dead now, surely would be soon; and there it might have joined my own pathetic, floating little body, had it not been for the Deep One’s spontaneous act of kindness.

  Shuddering at the thought, I fell to grooming my chest nervously. This ceased when Dot began nosing at the jewelry around my neck, examining it from all angles. “Pretty,” she announced at last.

  “Not as pretty as our new allies,” I told her.

  “Hmph. They would be fish,” Libby sniffed disapprovingly, and sneezed. “So. Now what?”

  We looked about ourselves. Empty cloaks lay scattered on the floor, surrounded by still-squirming piles of maggots—which, of course, we carefully avoided. Some little way distant, next to the stone altar, Cinnamon examined the remains of my tail. Head carried fiercely upright to support my majestic new collar, I shuffled toward her, to take a look for myself.

  “You don’t think” she said, as I approached, “that if we take it with us, the vet could put it back on?”

  I sniffed dispiritedly at the sad plume of fur, lying bloodied on the white, hairy fungus. He really had cut off quite a lot—three-quarters of the length at least. Damn, but I was going to look ugly for the rest of this lifetime. “Forget it,” I told her, with a sigh. “Look at it, in all that nasty stuff. It’s probably contaminated. And what if a maggot crawled in?” I hissed at the very idea.

  “We need to get out of here,” Dot called toward us, already padding determinedly toward the cavern’s back corner, where the shadowed entrance to the spiral staircase awaited. “The sooner, the better.”

  “All right,” I said. Abruptly, I felt utterly exhausted; perhaps shock was setting in. “First, though, let’s just…get away from these maggots, and…take a rest…”

  “Can’t,” Cinnamon said sharply. “Listen.”

  Dutifully, I listened. Though the six night-gaunts still circled and looped above us, their noise did not obscure the distant, echoing flaps of many, many wings.

  “They’re coming back up the tunnel!” Libby exclaimed, pupils ballooning in size. “We have to get out of here, now! Now!”

  I stared across the cavern, at the first stone steps of the long stairway, and what was left of my tail drooped. Even without the bracelet weighing me down, could I make it up those stairs quickly enough? Could I race past the things that lurked in the side passages, and climb past the secret door of the crypt, and dash through the red doors of the church? Could I then find someplace to hide in a Kingsport that was not my own, someplace that would conceal me for hours as I awaited the salvation of dawn? Not if the cloaked ones were mounted on fast-flying night-gaunts, I couldn’t.

  “We’ll never make it,” said Dot, coming to precisely the same conclusion I had, at precisely the same moment. “We’ll have to hide.”

  “Don’t be daft!” Libby shrilled. “They’ll search the whole place, when they see what’s happened here! And close all the doors, too!”

  Cinnamon coughed. We ignored her. She coughed again, this time in a clear pay-attention-to-me way.

  “What, Cinnamon?” I snapped.

  “I have an idea,” she said. “I have…a memory. But I don’t know, for sure…”

  “Stars’ sake, girl,” I told her, “if you have an idea, try it!” The flapping had grown nearer, I could tell, but it was becoming difficult to hear over the ringing in my ears. Forget climbing that winding staircase—I’d be lucky not to faint right here.

  Cinnamon dropped the key talisman—which, incredibly, she’d been carrying this entire time—at my feet. Leaping upon the altar, she stared upwards, at the night-gaunts who drifted aimlessly overhead.

  Then she gibbered.

  It was a sound I’d never heard a cat make, and my hair all stood on end. Libby’s pupils flared larger, which I wouldn’t have thought possible, and Dot hissed, her already-ugly face squashed into a hideous grimace.

  Yet the results were immediate. First one night-gaunt circled down to a landing, then another. They craned their blank, featureless faces toward Cinnamon, who gibbered at them again.

  In a cacophony of wing-beats, the returning night-gaunts burst forth from the tunnel, a flock of enormous bats straight from the depths of hell. At the same time, the two night-gaunts in front of Cinnamon pumped their wings and rose into the air. The first one picked up Cinnamon, grasping her around the middle with its long fingers, and then flew straight at me. I knew what
it intended.

  With what courage I had left, I crouched down and picked up the talisman—and I didn’t run. I did, however, close my eyes as those long fingers wrapped themselves around my abdomen, squeezing my ribs and tickling me with the tips of terrifying talons. The night-gaunt flapped, and the earth dropped away. I bit down on the talisman so as not to howl. My eyes were still tight-shut, so I couldn’t see what was happening, but my stomach was floating somewhere around my throat, and my heart stuttered with every swoop.

  At last I could stand it no longer. I opened my eyes—just as the night-gaunt dove for the narrow entrance of the stairwell. Once again I bit down on the iron key in terror, certain I was about to be dashed against the rock. Yet in the space of a heartbeat, the huge creature somehow fit itself neatly through the entrance, like threading a deadly needle, and beat its way upwards. For a few moments, the stairs were nothing but a blur, less than half a tail-length from my dangling paws. One dip, one slip, and I’d break my foot upon the unforgiving stone. Then, the light from the cavern was gone. We were flying in total darkness, under exactly the same conditions—except that now, of course, I couldn’t see a thing. I closed my eyes again, and I think I must have fainted, because when I opened them once more, we were soaring far, far above the earth.

  My heart nearly stopped with fear, as I observed the black waves pounding the white sand far below my paws. Yet nothing altered after long moments of anxious, shuddery breathing: the night-gaunt’s ticklish fingers never shifted, nor did it duck or dip as it had in the caverns.

  Eventually, I relaxed very, very slightly. Drifting through the cloudless, starry skies, sniffing the fresh, salty air of the ocean—these were good, wholesome things indeed, after all that had occurred below.