The Deptford Histories

by Robin Jarvis

  Trembling with ecstatic emotion, the High Priest stared at his empty claws then down at the altar where the great and fabulous shape of a huge, glowing egg now stood.

  Over its gorgeous surface, no trace or hint of the edges that had divided the nine individual segments could be seen—only a marvellous and worshipful whole and, leaping into the air, he let out an elated roar.

  “Behold!” he screeched. “The vessel which will receive Our Dear Lord’s spirit! After all this time—his ancient plan to cheat the forces of the Green has succeeded!”

  The congregation threw their knives and cutlasses in the air—shrieking in demented voices. “SARPEDON!” they howled. “SARPEDON! SARPEDON! SARPEDON!”

  Throwing back her head, and twirling in a wide, inelegant circle, the wobbling bulk of Ma Skillet squawked with gladness.

  “Mighty Serpent!” she exulted. “Your peoples await! Come—be with us!”

  Quaking with excitement, the High Priest gazed up at the expanse of night visible beyond the circular opening in the roof and his face was split by a raving, maniacal grin.

  High above, in the clear unclouded heavens the constellation of Scarophion was shining fiercely. The nine, snaking stars which heralded the demon’s proximity to the living plane were blazing with brilliant, silver fire and against their frosty flames even the moon could not compete.

  “Hear me!” the sable ranted, flinging his arms open wide and falling to his knees in subjugation. “Hearken now to the words of thy ambassador upon this mortal earth! The restraints that bind you in the void are at their weakest—break forth and array yourself in godly flesh once more. Return to us, your devoted disciples!”

  Around him the adepts fell upon their faces and before the temple the assembled legions did the same—yet on all their lips was their master’s name and they chanted it continuously as they waited for his return.

  With horror upon his face, Woodget looked up at the circle of night and the fierce stars that dazzled there. Then, to his astonishment and distress, their cold light flashed in the midnight sky, and a profound rumbling, like the deepest, calamitous thunder shook the heavens and the island quaked beneath it.

  From the lofty, vaulted ceiling, a deluge of stones rattled down and the pillars that upheld the temple shifted with a tremendous grating of marble over rock. Yet the foul cult members were oblivious to it all, they were possessed by the thought of their lord’s dark return and even if the ground had opened up to swallow them they would not have noticed.

  Then, as Woodget and Thomas stared heavenward, they saw nine rays of searing light come streaking from the Constellation of the Serpent. Through the empty reaches of the void, the flickering beams raced—streaming straight towards the unhappy world. Down over the oceans the spearing flames plummeted until at last they shone through the open portal cut into the rocky island’s jagged peak and into the Black Temple their icy splendour burst.

  As an immense column of pure light, the rays shot into the unhallowed sanctum, bringing with them the freezing winter of the infinite void and upon the altar, their frosty fires crackled and sparked.

  Over the surface of the great jade and golden egg, the blinding hoary beams flickered—playing over the glowing shell, lapping the twirling arabesques of the precious, living metal with rime.

  Thomas shuddered, the mingling of the jade’s livid gleam with the harsh, brumal starlight was a chilling and unlovely spectacle—a corpse flame to awaken the long-cold decayed dead and condemn unrepentent souls to perdition.

  Now the egg was wreathed in the lurid fires, completely enclosed within their bleak, glacial tongues. Then Thomas heard Woodget’s small and desperate voice call out.

  “Tom—look! Simoon, he be coming round.”

  Thomas wrenched his eyes from the awful scene by the altar and turned to where the jerboa’s limp and sprawled body lay upon the marble floor.

  In slow, painful movements, the prophet was awakening, returning from that dark forgetfulness to which his grappling with the High Priest had dispatched him.

  Wearily, he lifted his sandy-coloured head, his brambling whiskers twitching as he opened his large black eyes and beheld the terrible sight before him.

  Then, in a small, frail voice, Simoon murmured, “Finally the end has come. Our labours are completed and the doom of many is nigh.”

  Shaking his head, he slumped back onto the ground and beside him, realizing suddenly just how much faith he had put in the prophet, the fieldmouse wept bitterly.

  Yet still the cold fires crackled about the great egg—as the demonic, exiled spirit descended from the celestial confines to enter into the shell which he himself had ordered to be constructed in his former existence. Into that enchanted symbol of rebirth and creation that he had steeped in his own evil arts during the dark years of his reign, Suruth Scarophion, the Dark Despoiler—Gorscarrigern, the Coiled One—stole back to the mortal world and before the altar, the High Priest rose to his feet and spun around to face his followers.

  “Arise!” he commanded. “For all who adore Our Lord should witness his return.”

  In silent reverence the crowds obeyed and lit by the wintry light, the adepts and Mother Lotus lifted their faces to the wondrous, miraculous vision.

  As they watched, breathing rapidly in their suppressed fervour, the glacial flames about the egg began to diminish and, far above the earth, the nine stars were waning.

  “See!” the sable screeched. “Our Lord is amongst us once more.”

  To Thomas’s disgust, as the glare dwindled, becoming the pale green glow of disease once more, he saw that within the great egg, behind the curving surface of the glimmering jade, something was moving.

  In the heart of that hideously beautiful shell, a dark shadow had formed and already it was wriggling and contorting its squirming worm-like shape.

  “Sarpedon!” the High Priest cried bowing before the altar. “Your servants await you.”

  “Tom!” Woodget whimpered. “They’ve done it—the snake god’s really here!”

  Within the egg, the shadow jiggled and thrashed, growing larger with the passing moments. Soon it would break out of the shell and a nightmare more repellent than anything Woodget’s innocent mind could ever imagine would breathe the fetid air, filling its new-born lungs with gargling gasps as it gazed upon the devoted subjects who prostrated themselves before its unhallowed and absolute authority.

  “Feel the Sovereign’s might and majesty!” the High Priest called. “Let his sublime power flow through you all—let us greet him in the essence of our devotion. At this hour all shall be granted the gift of change and transformation. Honour your master, declare to him your fealty!”

  The assembly stared at him in confusion but all could feel the horrible influence which beat out from the pulsing egg and to their stupefied bewilderment their matted hides began to itch and buckle, tearing from their flesh and falling in shreds of fur and feather upon the floor.

  Innumerable nightmares were suddenly revealed—grisly lizard-like ogres with luminous eyes and spiny ridges sprouting down their necks forming horrendous distortions of scale-covered, bowed backs. Webbed claws raked the air and spindly haunches rocked the squat, slimy bodies from side to side as the last vestiges of their hot-blooded flesh was ripped loose and cast upon the ground.

  Quickly their initial, startled fright was transformed to joy and they revelled in their true, scaly natures—singing the praises of their peerless tyrant in gutteral hissing voices.

  Thomas closed his eyes and twisted his head away from that despicable sight. Before the steps, the host of the Scale had fulfilled their infernal goals and were now truly dedicated to their monarch’s service. In grotesque imitations of the Dark Despoiler they had shed their flesh and were revealed for the vile creatures they had become.

  Before the altar, the adepts were rapidly sloughing their skins, and a heap of furry, bristling pelts lay piled upon the black marble as they paraded their ghastly characters—flinging the
ir glistening arms in the air, dragging their newtish tails behind their gruesome, spine-spiking bodies, ogling the egg with fish-like eyes, flicking their tongues in and out of their wide mouths and shrieking in demented screeches.

  Watching them, and clapping with approval. Mother Lotus cackled, then she tore off her silk dressing gown and with it the abundant folds of her flesh until finally she ripped from her head the flour-powdered face.

  Like a vast, pot-bellied toad she appeared, with great, bulging eyes and a pale, blotch-covered throat.

  Beneath her obese, reptilian body, two stunted legs supported the grievous weight and they tottered and staggered to and fro as she croaked her obedience to the wriggling shadow inside the egg.

  Of all the servants of Scarophion, only the High Priest refrained from revealing his inner self, for he desired the demon to look upon him first of all and know him to be his main and trusted disciple. Then, when he had made his position plain and secured the high office under the Dark Despoiler, he would cast off his luxuriant coat and display his utter loyalty and allegiance.

  Yet when the black deity’s head broke free from the shell it would need nourishment and he turned to the three prisoners who for so long had been neglected.

  “Mother Lotus!” he commanded. “The infant Sarpedon will need sustenance. Fetch to me the smallest of the captives—the fieldmouse. He who dared to withhold the final fragment will be the first flesh upon which Our Master shall feast.”

  The bloated, scale and wart-ridden horror that was Ma Skillet stooped to retrieve from her dressing gown the golden, snake-adorned dagger and with a foul giggle issuing from her lipless mouth she waddled towards Woodget, her splayed feet slip-slapping upon the floor.

  Nearly fainting from terror, the fieldmouse watched her lumbering approach, the flabby reptilian hide quivering like a sour and mouldering jelly.

  The clamour of the scaly multitude drowned out his own voice as he cried out with fear and around him the eight adepts strutted their abhorrence, urging the High Priestess to slit his throat and pour his hot blood into their newly-born master’s gullet.

  Nearer the fat apparition came, her grunting gurgles terrifying him even more.

  “Spike he—stab he!” the cracked, hissing voice taunted. “Rip the sinew from bone for His delight. Mother Lotus—she provide good quenchers—oh yes.”

  Up to the shivering fieldmouse, the corpulent spectre stalked until her belly bulged above his head and she pointed the dagger at his throat.

  Thomas couldn’t look. He hung his head as the priestess lurched to murder Woodget and waited for his friend’s death cries to resound in his ears until his turn came.

  But the fearsome shrieks never sounded.

  Instead a clear, resonant voice rang through the excited, fervent yammering and Thomas snapped his eyes open in wonder.

  “Misbegotten horror—adipose abomination! Again I say be still!”

  Ma Skillet’s toad-like bulk shuddered uncontrollably and with an astonished squawk, she was hurled backwards—landing in a forlorn, squealing heap on top of her plentiful, sloughed skin.

  “Simoon!” Thomas yelled.

  Lifting his head from the ground, the jerboa nodded at the mouse in acknowledgement, then muttering a word of release, the cords that bound all three sprang apart and fell in tattered threads about them.

  Woodget’s eyes were shining and he sobbed with relief as the robed figure of the prophet rose to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at the gathered host.

  “Dismal followers of Gorscarrigern!” he declared, and at the sound of his authoritative voice the revels ceased and everyone turned to stare at him.

  “To this desperate end—I, and the other members of the Green Council have guided your felonious footsteps. This is in truth the end of one world but not the dawning of the infernal realm of your desiring. See now how your plots are destroyed and the schemes of your tyrannous overlord are beaten into the mire of your own making!”

  Glowering at him, the High Priest bared his fangs to pounce and silence the squeaking upstart once and for all—it would never do to have his distracting cries irritate the newly-born master.

  Yet even as he lunged forward, the jerboa threw up his paw and an invisible wall was flung between them.

  Snarling, the sable raised his claws to dispel the paltry trick but behind him the adepts were muttering in consternation and he whirled around to see what had upset them.

  “Now do the hopes of the Council and the efforts of many generations come to fruition!” announced Simoon. “For we have always known that a day would come when the enemy would wrest from us the nine fragments and attempt to restore their profane deity to harry the world. That is why we have done what we have done and may it prove well for now is the moment of dread and we shall see if our designs and sacrifices were not in vain.”

  “No!” shrieked the High Priest, tearing at his hair and grinding his teeth together. “What base treachery is this? What madness do my eyes see?”

  Upon the altar, the light which beat from the great egg was fluctuating. Its ghastly pallor flickered unsteadily and within its depths the wriggling shape was twitching and jolting as though wracked and stabbed with pain.

  “This we decided in the great long ago!” the jerboa proclaimed for all to hear in a voice that transcended the smallness of his stature and it rose into the stifling airs to pierce the furthest reaches of the hollow, rocky island.

  “For,” he continued, “though the honourable order of magicians and enchanters who worked for the Green’s greater glory were slain within the first temple, not all perished. There was in their number one who never stepped inside the evil shrine to beard the demon in his lair.

  “Too slow and small was he to ascend the temple steps with the speed of the others and so was spared the black venom which spilled from the demon’s carcass.

  “So was Simoon—obeah pilgrim, far seer, mage and prophet, treader of the forgotten track and guardian of the old rituals, left alone—the last of that noble order.

  “Yet in that sorrowful, triumphant hour when the Dark One was slain and the egg was found, Simoon knew what had to be done and the solution, as with most things, was simple.”

  The High Priest hardly heard him, for the movements within the egg were failing and with a final twisting spasm, the worm-like shadow became still and died. With a final pulsing glow, the light within the jade was quenched and a solemn darkness engulfed the temple as hairline cracks appeared across the shell.

  With a sickening, splitting sound, the egg began to fall to pieces. Onto the floor the jade crashed and into a mildewed dust it exploded. Fragment by fragment the shell collapsed and then, revealed within its centre was a monstrous, slug-like abomination that slithered squelchingly from the decaying egg and flopped lifeless from the altar.

  When it hit the floor, the disgusting horror ruptured and burst—over the black marble there spilled a stinking, putrescent mess that smoked and festered and a faint sound, like a sigh issued from its deformed and rotten mouth.

  Speechless with grief and fury, the sable turned to look on the jerboa. “What have you done?” he demanded. “Sarpedon! He is... he is...”

  “Sarpedon’s corporeal form is once again destroyed,” Simoon told him. “Never again can his blasphemous spirit knit slime and sinew together, for the work of the past is shattered. The shell is broken unto dust and can never be repaired.”

  “How?” the High Priest cried, taking a step towards him and, in his wrath, banishing the magical barrier the jerboa had placed between them. “The fragments were invulnerable—no harm could come to them.”

  Simoon clasped his paws together and laughed. “But no hurt nor harm was done to them!” he declared. “Quite the opposite. For I knew that the only way to prevent Scarophion’s return would be to injure him whilst he was still within the shell and so I counselled that the ninth and greatest fragment should be moved continually about the shrines of the blessed Green.

>   “In the unfolding years the evil was washed clean and the spells of the Dark Despoiler were turned about. The fragment was in fact hallowed. In short, we made certain that when the pieces were finally brought together again—the egg was addled.”

  A terrible growl issued from the High Priest’s throat and he rushed forward to destroy the sanctimonious creature. Before the steps, the congregation were screeching in dismay—nothing was left to them now and they lusted for vengeance. Yowling in abject despair, the adepts clawed at their hideous scales and shrieked into the darkness for doom and death to take them, and three of them tore out their own throats rather than exist in a world without Scarophion.

  Yet Simoon seemed unperturbed. Lifting his paw again, an invisible force cannoned into the High Priest and he was sent hurtling to the far corners of the temple—crying shrilly in fright. Then the jerboa held up both paws and said.

  “Now you who have displayed your fidelity to the fallen deity, remain in the form you have chosen so that goodly folk may see you for what you are and shun you. Shrink back into darkness and never wear the raiment of warm flesh again.”

  At that he reached into one of his many pockets and cast a cloud of blue powder into the air which immediately burst into a spluttering display of fiery sparks that crackled and exploded—showering down onto the rocky floor, where the tiny sizzling stars bounced and hopped, multiplying as they went.

  Into the crowding hordes the magic of Simoon cascaded and leaped and to the dismay of the reptilian apparitions which were gathered within the cavern, the sparks jumped onto the cast-off skins and buried themselves into the matted hides—kindling suddenly into raging fires that devoured the sloughed pelts completely until only ash remained.