“We have to go,” Hugh says. “We can’t stay here.”
Stuart nods, ice breaks from his beard and snot freezes upon his nose. He shudders and holds his arms to his chest. “So cold.”
They reach the edge of a drop-off that stretches into a valley. A single light flickers within a copse of trees. “There,” Hugh says. His hand shakes as he points towards it. There is an old ramshackle hut ahead. A soft glow radiates from its window. He knows the place somehow. A memory he can’t quite recall. This is a good place. A safe place.
“If we make the hut, we might survive.” He stares at Stuart, snow falls in thick flurries between them. In the gloom, he can see the terror etched across the other man’s face: sweat dripping from his chin, skin the consistency of porridge. Despite this, Stuart gives him the thumbs up, and they start the sprint towards the building. Towards the light. Salvation, if he can just get there in time.
He has to survive, if not for his sake then for Maggie’s. His little girl can’t – won’t – die, and neither will he. He has to do whatever it takes to make it through this night. Become the survivor. He owes it to Penny, at the very least.
He blinks.
Yes, the hut of your birth. Run there. Run home. They watch you sprint across the snow. So slow, they could catch you with ease. Many find you beautiful like an emergent butterfly fresh from its cocoon. They fear you. They need you, keeper of secrets. Can you feel them inside your head, squirming like maggots? They are you now. And you them.
“Wait,” Stuart calls behind him, “I can’t keep up.”
Hugh won’t stop for anyone – Maggie has to survive – and pushes forward faster than he’s ever run before, his daughter cradled in his arms like a broken doll.
“Hold on, honey.”
Hugh isn’t a well-built man, but he’s tall and between his height and speed, he makes the hut and shoulder charges the door. It rips free from one hinge and smashes open. He sprawls into the hut with a grunt.
Maggie moans, and her eyes flutter. “Daddy?”
“I’m right here, pumpkin.”
He finds himself within a sparsely decorated chamber. There’s a sharp smell in the air, disinfectant and grease. It catches in the back of his throat, and he coughs. It reminds him of something, a memory vague and distant . . .
“Hugh!” Stuart screams. One of the creatures has caught up and dragged him to the ground. “Help me.”
Hugh goes to step forward when Maggie coughs and starts to cry. Wait, he can’t leave her alone. Not his little baby. Not his princess.
“Daddy?” Maggie says, and the decision is made. He swoops her into his arms, where she will be safe, protected.
Blink.
This is the new truth. The new flesh. Right here, right now.
“Please, don’t.”
It lets Stuart go, and he scrabbles across the ice to throw himself into the building. There’s a bolt on the door, and Hugh slams it across, then backs away, holding Maggie as tight as he can. His breath coming in short gulps.
Do it.
A single lamp glows in the window, and the smell of disinfectant lingers in the room, pervasive and sharp. Hugh is reminded of his youth, a memory that surfaces unwanted to his mind’s eye. He sees pale sunlight filtering through stained windows, and has a sense of belonging. He shakes his head trying to break its hold, but the memory lingers. Creatures move around him, teeth sharp, blindly groping. The hot spill of blood, the anger, and the hunger: oh god, the hunger.
“Daddy,” Maggie says, and the image dissolves like paint in water. “Will those men come in the house?”
“If they do, I’ll make sure they regret it.”
Stuart lies against the wall, a pool of blood seeping across the floor. His face is blanched white, and he clutches at his stomach, the clothes torn and shredded.
“You’re injured.” Hugh’s tongue refuses to work. The rich smell of iron, the beat of Stuart’s heart is all . . . intoxicating. He turns his head away. What am I? What have I become?
What you always were; what you were meant to be. Do it.
His stomach knots into cramps. The hunger bubbles over. It’s all he can think about. Just a small bite, take the edge away.
Stuart knows, senses it somehow. “What are you doing?”
He’s lost a lot of blood, but Hugh grabs his head and smashes it into the wall. Stuart’s screams turn to gurgling cries. But this is not really Stuart, not his lifelong friend and teaching colleague. He’s someone else, a character from a video game. Not Stuart. Not Stu.
Yes, the forbidden flesh. Take its strength. Join us. Show Ithaqua the secret ways. The fields of quivering flesh, the tower of oblivion, the dwellers of the deep, all await us now.
“Shut up,” he gurgles. He is, after all, trying to eat.
“Daddy?” Maggie stands perfectly still, a small figure surrounded by shadows. “What are you doing?”
Hugh looks to his bloodied hands, to the pump of blood from Stuart’s neck. Chunks of flesh remain wedged between his teeth. “Don’t look, baby girl,” he whispers.
Maggie spins around, sobbing. She unbolts the door and runs crying into the storm.
“Wait.” Hugh gives chase. He is a man. Not some monster, some beast. He catches her with ease, grabbing her arm and spinning her around.
“I would never hurt you,” he screams. “Never.”
Too late, he realises, they are no longer alone. Ithaqua emerges from the storm as if born from it, flickering out of focus, not quite of this world, an illusion or phantasm played out in the mind. Mottled grey flesh hangs in loose folds from its arms, ribs exposed in stark contrast. Talons twitch in expectation, while a thick tail thrashes in the snow. The stench of rot, decay, and winter pestilence carries on the wind, settles upon his skin like the touch of a diseased lover.
It points to Maggie with a long-spindly finger, and he knows what it wants. How to sooth its appetite, its hunger.
There must be another way. There must-
Wait, if he is Ithaqua’s child, Maggie must be as well. He stares into her eyes, searching for the hunger, the primal need. “Be like me,” he whispers. “For Mummy. For Daddy.”
The storm lessens. Hot, fetid breath caresses his neck. The old one waits; the world is watching. He opens his mouth to cry, and a savage, inhuman wail bursts free instead.
He lets Maggie go, and she stands exposed in the snow. Human or beast? Child or monster? Which one?
Which?
And there, at the very last, he knows the truth.
Neil John Buchanan lives in the South West of England with two manic cats, two small children and a long-suffering, sympathetic wife. He is a horror fiction writer with work published in various online and print venues, including Pseudopod, Drabblecast, Necrotic Tissue, and the Terminal Earth anthology. When not thinking up inventive ways to describe dead folk, Neil can be found writing content for Starburst magazine. They give him free stuff, which is rather cool, and he hangs around pretending to look busy.
Neil was first drawn to the paranormal and all things that go bump in the night when his father let him watch Zombie Flesh Eaters at the tender age of eight. He has a Zombie Contingency Plan for each home he has ever lived in and advises you to do the same. Visit Neil’s website here: neiljohnbuchanan.com.
Story illustration by Steve Santiago.
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Yule Log
by Richard Holland
The log had not come willingly from the earth. It was if the roots at its base had gripped the peat in a fist of refusal. All the men on the estate had found themselves called to assist: pounding with mattocks, hauling on slippery chains or seeking a purchase on the slimy surface of the wood to drag it from its resting place deep in the bog. There was even the suggestion made of bringing in horses from the field, but the estate manager O’Rourke had vetoed this idea. Two men were injured during the labour, one with a dislocated shoulder, the other thanks to a pulled tendon in his calf,
and O’Rourke didn’t want to put valuable animals at risk of also going lame.
The log was jinxed, no question about it, but it had become a matter of pride not to give in to it. What can you expect, several of the men said, from violating the land of The Old Gentry themselves, right there beneath the cursed rings of the Fairy Rath itself? O’Rourke was too much a Connemara man to laugh at their superstitions but too practical a one to take much notice of them. He grimly urged on the work as if it were a personal contest between him and the stubborn earth. When, after hours as it seemed, the log lay at last upon the heather, just four feet or so in length and half that across, he stroked his red shovel-shaped beard and glared at it in disgust.
‘Who’d have thought that would have taken so much hauling upon?’ he said, and added: ‘Sure, it looks just like a big black slug.’
The wood glistened with the slime of centuries, ebonised almost to fossilisation by the long years it had lain beneath the bog.
‘It’ll be as hard as stone to chop but it’ll burn with a fine light when you’ve managed it,’ said Donal, one of the older farmhands, flexing and unflexing his weary fingers as if keen to begin the execution there and then.
‘I doubt his lordship’ll consider the trouble to fetch it out was worth it, what with two men now unfit to work,’ rumbled O’Rourke.
‘Ah, but just think what a grand Yule Log ’twould make,’ said one of the young lads who’d been called in to help. O’Rourke clapped the boy on the back for having such a happy thought. The cutting of the annual Yule Log was one of the highpoints of the Christmas ceremonies kept at Glenshee, the centuries-old mansion on whose estate they were employed. Usually it was culled from the Derry Copse, a nearby stand of ash trees which represented one of the few remnants of ancient woodland then surviving in western Ireland. But there was no reason why a hunk of bog oak should not do just as well, indeed even better.
‘It’s just the right size to fit the big old fireplace,’ said Donal; ‘at least, if you keep its roots on. And it’ll burn for an age! I’ll be bound it’ll still be aflame the other side of Twelfth Night.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ said O’Rourke, rubbing his hands together with enthusiasm, looking for all the world as if he was already warming them by its light. ‘It’ll also save making further damage to the sparse old copse. Come on you men, let’s get it to the house.’
The procession of the Yule Log from Derry Copse to Glenshee was normally a jovial one, the men bawling out hymns as they hauled it along, a small boy as like or not riding on its back and geeing them along with shrill encouragement. This was a more solemn affair and, like the removal of the stump from the soil beforehand, one that was much harder work and took much longer than it had any right to. To make matters worse, a steady downpour had begun as soon as they had started to drag the wood away, and minutes later a chilly mist had rolled in from the ocean a mile to the west.
‘Are ye sure this blasted log hasn’t turned to coal already?’ grunted one of the men. ‘It weighs a ton.’
‘The roots keep catching on the stones and things,’ explained the youth who had made the suggestion of keeping the log for Christmas. He was jogging along beside it as the men hauled it through the heather. ‘Sometimes it looks like they’re doing it on purpose. They’re like thin long fingers. I swear they’re making grabs for the bushes and the boulders.’
The boy was, of course, ignored.
Fortune favoured O’Rourke when the gang reached the manor house. His master, Lord Killernan, was in the courtyard hearing the explanations and complaints of the injured men, who had been sent on ahead in a wagon. O’Rourke took a deep breath, anticipating a severe reprimand for failing to prevent their injuries. However, the storm had put an abrupt end to the morning ride of the two ladies of the house and brought their early return. Lady Killernan and the Honourable Cora’s enthusiasm for the arrival of the Yule Log had the effect of curbing his master’s displeasure.
‘Damned fools,’ snapped Lord Killernan, to his overseer’s relief. ‘Should have been more careful. A tough tussle, eh?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said O’Rourke. ‘Worse than trying to free that stubborn bullock from the Furbogh Bog. Though I can’t understand the reason for it.’
‘The good doctor’s coming for dinner so he can give the fellows a look-over then,’ added Killernan. ‘Clumsy oafs.’
The lord of Glenshee manor was in his middle forties, a sparely built man with a moustache too large for his narrow face. Conscious of his unimpressive stature, he had long ago adopted a brusque and irritable manner in a bid to compensate for it. In contrast, his wife, Lady Margaret, was a handsomely built matron who wore her age and her figure well. It was perfectly suited to the full-busted, long-skirted fashions of those days just prior to the outbreak of the First World War. Lord and Lady Killernan’s only child Cora at 20 was one of the acknowledged beauties of Galway. Willowy and raven-haired, her finely sculpted features made her appear aloof, even haughty, until she smiled, which fortunately was often. Cora was in raptures over the arrival of the Yule Log.
‘It makes me feel Christmassy already,’ she said. ‘And it’ll burn well and slowly, too: the old bog oak always does.’
‘It’ll need a good wipe down,’ pointed out her mother. ‘It should be left in an outbuilding to dry off before we bring it into the house.’
‘It’s wet all right,’ said Cora. ‘Has anyone noticed the fish scales on it?’
Cora crouched down before the log and ran her gloved hand along its length. The men gathered round her.
‘Did you see this O’Rourke?’ she asked. ‘There are u-shapes, sort of chevrons, chiselled along it. And I’d swear that’s an eye carved at this end. All in all, what with those wavy roots streaming out behind it, it has all the appearance of a great fish.’
O’Rourke stooped over the girl’s shoulder but admitted he couldn’t make out the markings. Doubtful muttering from the men suggested they too were unable to see the pattern.
‘You’re not all blind, surely?’ said Cora.
‘Now, now, stop making your glove all filthy,’ admonished her mother. ‘Maybe when it’s dried out a bit we’ll be able to see it more clearly. Come along into the house now.’
Several hours later the local GP Dr Neligan joined Lord Killernan in the stable yard to enjoy a cigar and to take a look at the Yule Log. Earlier he had relocated a popped shoulder, bound up a sprained ankle and seen to one of the stable lads, Joey Murphy, who had suddenly come down with a fever, so had felt justified in making a good dinner. He was now overstuffed with pork and port. This did not prevent him from noticing how cold the night was, however. He shivered as tongues of fog curled around the stable doors.
‘This is unseasonably bitter even for a Galway December, my lord,’ he said. ‘The cold appears to have distressed the horses, too.’
From behind a number of the stable doors could be heard muffled whickering and the stamping of hooves on straw and stone.
‘I’ll have to get the lads to see about some blankets,’ said Lord Killernan. ‘The log’s in this small byre on the end. Let’s not linger long, Neligan. I just thought you might like to take a look at it, considering your antiquarian interests.’
If anything it seemed colder inside the lean-to than it did outside. The men’s breath blended with the smoke of their cigars. Dr Neligan raised his lantern and brought it up to where the Yule Log was lying along an old feeding trough.
‘Carvings, your daughter said?’
‘Fish-scales or somesuch,’ said Lord Killernan. ‘I couldn’t see them.’
‘No, nor can I.’
‘It’s my belief they were merely marks made by the men as they handled it. Young Joey gave it a good scrape earlier to get all the mud off. But perhaps if you run your fingers along it, you might be able to make something out?’
‘Yes, perhaps.’ Dr Neligan reached out for the log but then for a reason he was unable to explain to himself, let alone to Lord Killernan
, he couldn’t quite bring himself to make contact with the log. There was something repellent about it. He was reminded of the time he was called to a body found washed up on the beach during his first year in practice.
‘I fear my fingers are too cold to feel anything,’ he laughed, to hide his embarrassment.
‘Perhaps we should return to the warmth of the house,’ said his host. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing remotely archaeological about this lump. Although I believe it may be many hundreds of years old?’
‘Oh thousands, my lord, thousands,’ said Dr Neligan. ‘This old tree stump is a remnant of the great primeval forest which covered this land back in the Bronze Age, or possibly even the Stone Age, thousands of years before the birth of Christ. One can only imagine what the people were like back then, how they lived or how they worshipped. Who knows what loves, what tragedies may have been played out beneath its branches, or indeed what strange rites?’
‘You’re getting fanciful, Neligan,’ rasped Lord Killernan. ‘Let’s get out of this damnable cold.’
Dr Neligan followed his lordship out of the byre, shivering theatrically but warming to his subject.
‘You know, my lord, it will be dim memories of our distant ancestors that led to the belief in fairies so prevalent here in the west of Ireland. I understand the log was dug up out of the peat near the ancient hill fort?’
‘The so-called “Fairy Rath”, yes.’
‘Are you aware, my lord, that the fairies in this part of Connemara were once upon a time called the Fine an Domhain, or Tribe of the Deeps? They were believed to live under the sea, only coming on to land to steal away maidens or plant changelings among the peasantry. If ichthyomorphic designs had indeed been present on that ancient bit of wood, it would have been a thing worth recording.’
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 Page 77