by Anthology
We paused for breath, exchanging looks in the dim light. "Be my guest," I gasped between pants of pain. The body twitched, starting to rise again.
I looked away and moments later came the crunch of sword through skull. Two dozen blows to make sure. By the time I looked back, all that was left of the late Lord Graske was smeared across the floor. The body didn't move again, but with the head gone fluids started gushing from the wounds like a burst wineskin
Meldrum cursed, words more commonly heard in Docklands taverns. I hadn't known he'd had that in him.
"The High Houses will be in an uproar," he said. "Not to mention the Arcanum." He snarled, punching Lord Graske's throne over. "They will be furious. By evening this scandal will be all over the city." He looked down at Ilea. "The trial alone will be a nightmare. But Justice has to be done."
I couldn't have that, couldn't afford to make enemies of the High Houses. While on the surface they'd back our actions, we would still have sullied their good name, and that kind of thing was not forgotten or forgiven. Normally I would be cheering him on, more than willing to see all those vaunted names dragged through shit, but Meldrum, for all his faults, wasn't a complete bastard. He didn't deserve the shitstorm coming his way. More importantly, I was too involved this time. Some of that storm would be coming my way and I was already on my last legs as far as the Arcanum was concerned. No, it was better for everybody if this situation just went away.
I reached for Meldrum's arm. He knew what I was and what I could do. He swayed out of reach and the point of his sword lifted towards my face. "What are you—"
But I didn't need to touch him. His eyes glazed over as I slipped into his mind like I was fitting on an old glove; it was far from first time I had done this after all. The first time I had been young, just getting to grips with my power, and I messed it up, left fragments behind in a cack-handed attempt to cover my trail. No wonder the sight of me roused his ire—part of his subconscious still knew that I was dangerous, and even though those memories had been altered or scrubbed out I couldn’t seem to get rid of it all.
What to do with Ilea? Five days from now she could experience an overwhelming urge to jump from the tallest window. Her mind was probably too far gone, ruined by blood sorcery. A mercy, surely.
It would have been so easy. If only she hadn’t been yet another victim, one of her father’s making. I cursed and went to work on Ilea and Meldrum: adjusting memories, weaving a new narrative, something believable and innocuous. This was exactly the sort of thing that other mages feared, and why the Arcanum watched me for any misstep. Luckily they all thought I was just a wastrel and a drunk. I appeared to be as far from those tyrants of legend as was possible. It kept me alive.
Lord Graske was dead and gone, had been since the cremation. No blood sorcery or revenants. All we were doing was returning a stolen brooch that Meldrum found on one of the corpses and had identified as Ilea's. Nothing worthy of any real examination, in fact everybody would actively avoid dwelling on it.
Meldrum didn’t pose much of a problem, but locking away Ilea’s memories of the murders and cutting away the corruption took longer than I feared. Her father's deeply ingrained and twisted compulsions proved especially tenacious. By the time it was finished I was drenched in sweat and teetering on the edge of losing control. Even with this there was no guarantee she would ever be entirely sane. I would have to keep an eye on her.
I was taking no chances with her father. I opened an old sarcophagus and tossed all the body parts in, then took a spare oil lantern from the wall and torched the lot. When the flames died away I slid the stone lid back into place. Nobody would ever find his remains.
Ilea led us out, all a-daze.
At the front door she blinked and came back to herself, smiled and held out a hand for Meldrum to kiss. "I find myself very glad that you were on duty, my good Sir," she said. “Thank you for returning my brooch.”
Meldrum kissed her hand and then we were off, heading back down into the lower city. He turned a suspicious eye on me. "I knew you'd be useless. We have not found any leads on these murders." He noticed me shaking and sweating, and turned away in disgust. "Away and crawl back into your ale-cup. Why they sent you I shall never know." He snorted and strode off.
Why indeed. A sick sense of dread oozed over me. Who would send an uncouth wastrel like me when Meldrum had asked for a seer to tease answers from the stones? I didn't think it blind chance. Somebody high up had been on to Ilea. But was that somebody also on to me? I decided to take Meldrum’s advice and head off in search of a drink. The stronger the better.
The Shadow Under Scotland(Short story)
by Cameron Johnston
Orginally published by The Lovecraft eZine
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 out 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 the innkeeper noisily cleared his throat. The hulking bald man stared at the knife buried in his table. "Are you going to pay for that then, Morag?"
She flushed, shot a 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 down 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 ever 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 t
he 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 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 sheathes.
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 of 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 down 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 of 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 up 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.
Her feet thumped down, snapping and crushing dry sticks beneath her. A horrid thought coalesced in her mind. "Give me a candle!"
She stretched up for the flickering candle, swallowed, and then looked down. Bones. She stood in a pile of animal bones. They'd all been stripped clean of flesh and cracked open to get at the marrow. "Found your cows, Ewan. My sheep too.” As she looked around she realised that there were far too many bones. Some still glistened with viscous fluids, but most were old and brittle.
She slipped. The candle fell, snuffed out, plunging her into darkness. Her heart thudded with sudden panic. She heard noises in the cave, bones shifting. “Quick! Give me another candle.”
"I'm coming," Calum said, sliding down. In an attempt to keep his candle and sword from dropping, he landed awkwardly and fell into the pile of bones. He lurched upright, panting, face beaded with sweat, swinging his sword to face every shadow cast by the flickering candles.