You will recall that the Necromancer, T’Abram Spitch, had conjured the ghost of Lars Pedersen, in the mistaken belief that, during his lifetime, The Woeful Dane had hidden a horde of silver somewhere upon the island. Although the wraith was helpless to resist T’Abram’s commands, the fact that no such treasure existed gave him the freedom to lead the necromancer to a place where something entirely different had been buried; something that had been there for many centuries and was never meant to be released again.

 

T’Abram Spitch was tired beyond belief. For more than a week he had toiled, moving rocks and boulders in an attempt to find the Viking treasure. The ground was hard and unforgiving, reluctant to yield to the simple tools that he had stolen from the people who lived in the shadow of the Gydynap Hills. At last, after much toil, many blisters and the occasional profanity, the necromancer had unearthed his prize. Standing in a crater of his own making, deeper than he was tall, T’Abram surveyed the fruit of his labour. It was a medium-sized chest of bog oak, bound with bands of brass.

If T’Abram had thought that his work was over, he was very much mistaken. The apparently easy task of cracking open the chest proved to be a greater problem than he had anticipated. Despite attacking the box with every pilfered tool at his disposal, it remained stubbornly sealed. A succession of blows with a hammer, a pick-axe and, in frustrated desperation, his boot, left no mark upon the wood or brass. Despondent at the end of a disappointing day, he covered the hole with foliage and returned to his lodgings, at the strangely named inn, ‘The Swætan Tæppere’ (‘The Sweaty Tapster’).

The necromancer lay in his bed, exhausted but unable to sleep, troubled by thoughts of failure. It must have been a very precious treasure indeed for the Viking to have gone to such lengths to secure it. He racked his brain to think of ways of opening the chest. Being a man who had studied widely, T’Abram was aware that gunpowder might do the trick. As a student he had been required to read Friar Roger Bacon’s ‘Opus Maius’ and although written some three centuries earlier, the book was precise in its instructions as to how the explosive might be made.

“What was it that Bacon had written about the composition of gunpowder?” T’Abram asked himself, out loud.

“Ah yes… I remember. Willow charcoal, sulphur and… something else… saltpeter! That was it. That is the answer.”

He sat up in bed, elated. Gunpowder will definitely blast the box open. Then his mood changed abruptly when the realisation dawned upon him that he had no means of procuring any of these ingredients. He flopped back down and buried his face in the hard pillow, totally defeated. At last, just before dawn, sleep overcame him and with sleep came clarity.

 

The answer had to be magic!

Only magic could have sealed the chest so securely and only magic could open it.

What a fool he had been.

Suddenly his eye was drawn to the staff, resting against the wall in the corner of the room. The sigils carved along its length had once more started to glow, as they did when he conjured the wraith of Lars Pedersen.

So, magic it was to be, then. It was time to finish the work that he had started.

 

The brass-bound chest lay where he had left it. It looked innocent enough but T’Abram knew that it must contain something more than mere silver: he dare not imagine the vast wealth that lay within those dark, wooden walls.

 

Although a chilly, freshening wind blew from the sea, T’Abram was sweating profusely. It had been no easy task to drag the chest out of the crater; the effort of will and concentration needed to precisely incant the spells required to open it left him weak.

An audible groan emanated from the box as each uttered cantrip gradually loosened the tightly bound bonds that had served to constrict it for countless centuries. The sigils on his staff burned now with a new intensity.

He hoped it was his tired eyes playing tricks but T’Abram was convinced that the rock-hard bog-oak heaved and shifted like mere cloth as the spells gradually took effect. Suddenly, with a great sigh, the chest gave a final shudder and the bands of brass burst with a huge bang. They spun off in all directions, one narrowly missing the necromancer’s head and burying itself in a nearby tree. Filled now with a mixture of excitement and apprehension, T’Abram peered into the depths of the newly-opened chest to see what manner of treasure – if treasure it was – he had unlocked.

 

There appeared to be something wrapped in a fleece of some description. Or maybe the fleece was the treasure? From the dimmest recesses of his mind T’Abram dredged up the memory of an ancient tale that he had heard as a child. It told of a hero who set out to find a fleece made of pure gold. Could this be it? Had he discovered the legendary Golden Fleece? His heart raced. Gingerly he reached into the chest.

Having spent much of his adult life consorting with the spirits of the dead, T’Abram Spitch was confident that there was nothing left in the world that could surprise him. It just shows how wrong you can be. Life is nothing, if not full of surprises, even for a magician.

The moment his fingers brushed, what he fondly imagined to be, the fleece, it suddenly acquired a pair of lurid, glowing eyes that glared at T’Abram with something that fell far short of affection. He recoiled with horror and with a whimper jumped back a full and athletic six feet.

With a series of guttral groans the ‘fleece’ began to move, to expand and blink in the daylight. Through a tangle of hair a face appeared, not quite human but not quite bestial either. It looked somewhat bemused. The glowing orbs of eyes regarded the necromancer fiercely. To T’Abram’s horror a pair of hairy legs appeared over the side of the chest and gaining leverage, eased the creature out to freedom. T’Abram remembered his own legs and retreated to what he hoped was a place of safety.

 

Discovering that his treasure was an, apparently, living creature of some description had come as a shock. This, however, was as nothing compared to the revelation that followed. The beast that stood before the startled necromancer was terrifying… and weird, to say the very least.

 

Imagine, if you will, a lion. That was easy, wasn’t it? It gets a bit trickier now, though. Imagine that the lion has some almost human characteristics to its face. And that it has five – yes FIVE – totally leonine legs, except that these legs did not end in paws but in hooves. Cloven hooves. Oh, and there was one other thing… this lion-like creature – which for ease of description I will call a demon – has no body, just a head from which its five legs radiate like the spokes of a wheel. You can surely see why T’Abram was feeling somewhat unsettled by all of this. Things are to get even stranger, however. The demon was at least a dozen feet tall, dwarfing both the necromancer and the bog-oak chest in which it had been impossibly imprisoned. T’Abram stood stock still, processing the details of the figure that stood before him, by now on the opposite side of the crater. The necromancer was forcing his brain to accept its strangeness as something perfectly normal. Then the demon moved and T’Abram Spitch screamed.

It advanced towards him, propelling itself like a wheel but as its legs went round the head was a hub that stayed perfectly still, never taking its eyes off the hapless magician.

With less than a second to spare before the demon was upon him, T’Abram had the presence of mind to raise his staff. It crackled and hissed as a bolt of magical energy pulsed through it and caught the demon full in the face. The force of the bolt not only stopped the creature in its tracks but also sent T’Abram sprawling back into the crater. It took but seconds for the demon to recover and before the necromancer could do anything, he found himself caught beneath a single cloven-hoof that threatened to crush his ribcage. The demon glared down at him, a cold fire in its eyes. T’Abram felt his mind becoming blurred and his body numb. Feebly he reached for his staff and aimed it once more at his attacker. It spat no fire this time but just emitted a lacklustre glow. The demon smiled at him. This was not a pleasant smile but a horrible, drooling, leer that wordlessly indicated that the game was up and all resistance would be futile. The demon reached down and caught the staff in its grinning maw and effortlessly chewed it up completely. The  necromancer could only watch, aghast, as it raised a hoof, ready to deliver the death blow. Then something strange happened. The whole of its grotesque body began to glow. The five legs began to spin, slowly at first, then speeding to a fiery blur like a Catherine Wheel, spitting sparks of every colour. Meanwhile the ghastly head in their centre had become an incandescent core and no longer recognisable as a face.

 

The landlord of The Swætan Tæppere was standing at his back door when the explosion struck. Although it came from the far west of the island the reverberations shook the inn to its foundations, rattling the windows and sending tiles skidding from the roof. A plume of brightly coloured flame could be seen, bursting a hundred feet or more into the air.

“Magicians!” he exclaimed in disgust.

“I knew he’d be trouble.”

 

The explosion had shaken the whole of the island. Unsurprisingly, as soon as the initial panic was over, people started to drift towards the area. They were surprised to find that, while the flames had been worryingly high, the hole that was left behind was more than impressive. Bottomless would be an understatement, for one could reasonably expect a bottomless hole on an island to have water where the absent bottom should be; this one did not. It was an abyss, dark and uninviting. There was, in its unfathomable depths, a suggestion of something of an iridescent nature, a mere pinpoint that swirled and churned; something more to be experienced via the hairs on the back of the neck rather than being seen. No one spoke a word or made a sound but as one, retreated back to their homes. Frightened parents told their children that child-eating monsters lurked by that hole. These were stories designed to keep them away; to keep them safe. It is ironic that the truth was far scarier than any nursery tale.

 

It was a full two hundred and fifty years, following the demise of T’Abram Spitch, that the founding families arrived. By then The Swætan Tæppere had become The Squid and Teapot and within a generation the island’s first Night-Soil Man, Killigrew O’Stoat, had set up in business. The job suited a young man who was as painfully introverted as Killigrew. When he discovered the abyss, which he assumed was a sinkhole, he was delighted. Here was somewhere to safely dispose of the night-soil.With the addition of a simple cottage this would be the perfect base for his trade. And so, that is how Killigrew and the generations of Night-Soil Men who followed after, became custodians of the mysterious and unfathomable abyss, the grave of T’Abram Spitch.

Art by Tom Brown