A wall, are there. Like Black Cat by A. E. Poe. She was inside. (Dr Abbey)
I’ve always wondered about the way old houses fall down once no one is in them. As though it is the faith of the inhabitants holding the walls up. If no one believes that these stones are a house, then the walls also forget, and crumble.
It is normal to put something in the walls, to help a building stand tall. I don’t know why old shoes are popular – perhaps simply because they are easy to come by. Sometimes when old walls tumble, they reveal bones – cats or dogs most often. I like to think these were beloved pets who died of old age and were kept in the walls to be part of the home forever. Not bloody sacrifices slaughtered in barbaric rituals.
There are stories about someone who knew someone who found the bones of a child in the walls. Perhaps these are just stories, or mistakes made with dog bones, It would be fair to say that on this island, unwanted children are as easy to come by as worn out shoes. Easier perhaps, for you have to feed children, whereas worn out shoes can be repurposed in all kinds of ways.
I am not sure how a dead child would help secure the walls. However, who amongst us has not made sacrifices of one sort or another, hoping to appease the nameless, faceless forces that hold sway over our lives?
She was in the walls.
(Story concept and art by Dr Abbey, text by Nimue.)
The legendary witch Pushana appeared to be addressing a suit of armour in the corner of her workroom. Which was odd. But what happened next was even odder. She waved her hand in a spiralling motion with a strange twist at the end and muttered a few words under her breath. In response, the armour made a series of metallic creaks as it awoke. A strange and frightening head emerged from the top of the armour, and inhuman hands appeared at the end of the previously empty arms. Hands with long, pointed purple fingernails. The entity in the armour twisted his head from side to side, as if testing the movement, then two purple flames sprang to life atop his head. “Hello, old friend.” Said Pushana. The Knight Possessed nodded in reply.
They left the cottage quietly. Pushana lived in a remote, wild and uninhabited part of Hopeless, Maine. Despite her significant abilities and her striking appearance, only the storytellers wrote of her existence. And that was pretty much the way she liked it. Living surreptitiously on Hopeless Maine allowed her to carry on with her magical business, undisturbed by the attention she would inevitably receive elsewhere. Islanders shunned the area where she lived as it was fabled for incredibly dangerous beasts, lethal undergrowth, and strange, fatal hauntings. Pushana neither corrected this misconception nor did she stop herself from starting a few rumours for fun.
“Something is coming to the island, something I cannot allow. This place suits me and I do not want to leave, not yet anyway. I fear we may have a battle ahead Sir Knight.”
The Knight Possessed simply shrugged. They walked in silence for a while. It was not far to the shoreline, a twenty-minute walk at most, and the normally threatening wildlife of the island gave the pair a wide berth, so they were not inconveniently waylaid.
They had to walk along the black beach for a while until they came to a break in the cliffs. Looking up, Pushana could see the raggedy rope ladders and steps that led up the rock-face to a ledge on which a ramshackle structure was perched. Whilst it looked small from down here, Pushana knew that the rock shelf went quite a way back into the cliff.
This was Edgard’s home, from where he conducted his business of beachcombing. Many things washed up on the shore of Hopeless, Maine. Many were worthless detritus, it’s true, but amongst the flotsam and jetsam were things of value, things one could trade. Given the ragged rocks, ruthless tides, epic storms, and the horrendous proliferation of monsters living in the sea, it was a dangerous profession, but Edgard seemed both adapted to it and proficient.
Pushana and The Knight carefully climbed up and looked around. The ramshackle occupant of the ramshackle home was not currently about, so Pushana made herself a pot of tea using a kettle she found and a fire she started in an old grate and settled into an old seaweed-strewn chair made of old boxes. The Knight stood behind her silent and immobile. He did that a lot. Presently there was a scrabbling noise, and the creature known as Edgard, or the beachcombing spearman, appeared above the edge of the floor and climbed onto the ledge. He looked at Pushana nervously. “Smell, you do.”
“Hello Edgard” said Pushana calmly.
“Why you here? Hurt me? Him,” he gestured at The Knight, “Him, hurt me?”
“We’re not here to hurt you Edgard. I like you Edgard, remember?” Pushana made a small motion with her hand.
Edgard dipped his head, furrowed his brow, then looked up, “Help me, you did, once. Edgard thanks you. What you want?”
“I know you have something, something washed up recently, a book”
“Many book Edgard have. Some not wet. Some valuable I reckon.” His eyes lit up at the thought and he licked his lips.
“Oh, this book has no value for you. And it might even kill you. I will be doing you a favour taking it off your hands.”
“Kill Edgard?” He looked worried now. “Your book, I think. I get it for you now.”
Without a further word, Edgard shuffled off to the back of the ledge where various piles of ‘treasure’ he had combed from the beaches were laid out. Some were metal objects, some textiles, some unidentified. One was a big pile of books. Edgard walked right past this pile and went to a rickety shelf. He came back with a single book.
“This one, I reckon.” He offered it to Pushana.
She took it and glanced at its cover. “Thank you Edgard. Yes, this is the one. You may not realise it, but I have done you another favour today.”
“Bad feel. The book.” Added Edgard.
Pushana nodded, “I will leave you in peace. Be careful out there Edgard, please let me know if you find any more bad feel books.”
Edgard nodded. “Parting well.”
Pushana took a length of cloth from her coat and wrapped the book carefully. Stood up and left, with The Knight following. Edgard watched them go.
–◊–
Back in her cottage, Pushana laid the wrapped book on a table in the middle of her workspace and then took a jar of powder down from a shelf. Uncorking it, she carefully laid out a line of the slightly shimmering powder, encircling the book. She took some strange blue candles out of a locked box, placing three, one each in a tall candle holder, to form a triangle around the book. When she lit them, they burned with an eerie blue, unflickering flame. Finally, she passed five times clockwise around the table muttering sounds under her breath, and twice anticlockwise muttering the same sounds backwards. Only when she had finished did she unwrap the book.
“Be ready. We should be safe, but I would like you to be ready just in case.” The Knight nodded.
Pushana opened the cover of the book. There was an uncanny noise, like a distant howl. She glanced at the title page. Whatever the script was, it was not English, but Pushana appeared to understand it well enough.
“This is indeed The Book of Tentacles. With this, I should be able to locate the disturbance.”
As Pushana skimmed through the pages there was a louder noise – a sort of a squelch. Then the pages started to rustle of their own accord. Pushana stepped back, and a film of green slime appeared on the edges of the book. The pages became blurry and green, dark and misty. It was hard to make out the words and images as they dissolved into murk. As she watched intently, a green protuberance thrust its way out of the book, followed by another. Thin strands of slime clung to them and stretched out as they pushed through. It was clear now that they were tentacles. There were five now, and they all stopped for a moment and appeared to sense the room. There was a moan, and they started rising again. They were swelling in size, and had very nearly reached the ceiling.
“Enough of this nonsense.” And Pushana waved a hand and incanted some quiet words. The tentacles screeched, but just softly, and stopped moving.
“I cannot let you out. Certainly not here. And not until you do my bidding. I have a purpose, and you will help me. But I promise you, when my mission is over, I will set you free. For now, you must return to your literary prison and bide your time.” She waved her hand once more, and the tentacles retreated. Soon the book was just a book again, just like any other. She extinguished the candles, tidied up the powder carefully back into the jar, and placed the jar back on the shelf. Retrieving the cloth she had used earlier, she re-wrapped the book and tucked it under her arm.
“Come,” she addressed The Knight Possessed again, “We are very short on time.”
To say that Durosimi O’Stoat had not slept well would be an understatement. He had lain awake all night trying to fathom why his attempt to open a portal to the rest of the world had failed so dismally, despite all of his preparations and precautions. It made no sense! He couldn’t even blame Doc Willoughby, who had carried out his instructions to the letter. Something had gone wrong and he needed to know why; Durosimi did not like failure.
Daylight seemed to be fighting a losing battle, as it valiantly struggled through the fog of another Hopeless morning. Durosimi had no sooner succumbed to sleep, slipping gently into a delicious sense of comfortable numbness, and flirting with his first dream, when he was dragged rudely back to full consciousness by a serious of urgent raps upon his front door. Muttering and cursing, the sorcerer stumbled out of bed and padded his way downstairs, flinging open the door with a look that said, “This had better be good!”
Doc Willoughby was momentarily struck dumb by the apparition standing before him, resplendent in a crumpled nightshirt, hand-knitted pink bed socks, and a nightcap sitting at an angle that might have been considered jaunty, under other circumstances.
Before Durosimi could snarl an appropriately scathing matutinal greeting, Doc blurted out,
“It’s happened. We did it. We damned well did it.”
It took a second or two for the meaning of Doc’s words to sink in. Durosimi opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, then dashed back indoors to put on clothes more fitting to the occasion.
By the time Doc Willoughby and Durosimi reached their destination, a sizeable crowd had already gathered, to wonder at the strange gap that had appeared between the trees. News travels fast on Hopeless.
“What do you think this is?” asked Philomena Bucket, looking up into Mr Squash’s deep, wise eyes. “Could it be another portal opening up?”
“I can’t say that it’s anything like one that I have ever seen,” admitted the Sasquatch. “It is almost as though someone has torn a hole in the air. And I really don’t like the thin green mist that’s leaking from it.”
“I noticed that as well,” said Rhys Cranham, who, until little more than a year ago had been the island’s Night-Soil Man. “It reminds me of whatever it is that’s swirling about at the bottom of the sinkhole at Pooh corner.”
A shiver went down Philomena’s spine. Although she was no wiser than Rhys, with regard to the contents of the sinkhole in the Night-Soil Man’s garden, this did not sound at all good.
Lingering at the rear of the crowd, Durosimi looked upon the strange rip in the fabric of the morning with mixed feelings.
“I can’t believe that we really managed to do this,” said Doc excitedly.
“Be quiet, you fool,” hissed Durosimi, glaring at his companion. If looks could maim, Doc would been carried home in several small boxes that day.
“Surely…” began Doc, but was roughly silenced by Durosimi, who drew him away, out of earshot of the crowd.
“No one must know that I… that we are responsible for doing this,” he rasped. “Do you understand? If that thing really is a portal, don’t expect it to take you anywhere that you might want to visit.”
Doc looked confused, and asked, “Then where does it lead to?”
Durosimi drew a deep breath. “I dread to think,” he replied.
That evening, a council of war was held in The Squid and Teapot.
“We need to keep people well away from there,” said Mr Squash. “I can bang some stakes into the ground and fence the area off, just to be on the safe side”
”Do you really think that it’s dangerous?” asked Rhys.
Before the Sasquatch could answer, Philomena said, “Mr Squash is right. That hole in the atmosphere is a total anomaly. It’s best that we err on the side of caution.”
“In that case, maybe we should get a few volunteers to take turns keeping an eye on it,” said Reggie Upton. “Ideally we should have someone watching the thing around the clock. I could put a rota together, if you like.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” said Rhys. “You never know, we might even get Durosimi to help out.”
“Oh, yes,” observed Philomena drily. “Perhaps he could patrol the area on a flying pig.”.
Despite Philomena’s scepticism, and much to everyone’s surprise, Durosimi did indeed agree to be part of the volunteer group charged with keeping watch over ‘The Anomaly’, as everyone was now calling it. In fact, he had even put his name forward to do all of his shifts at night, secretly reasoning to himself that this would provide an excellent opportunity to study, without disturbance, and at close quarters, the result of his recent foray into Etruscan magic.
“He’s up to something,” said Philomena to Mr Squash, when she heard the news. “Maybe someone should be watching the watcher.”
It is possible that readers of these Tales from the Squid and Teapot will be surprised to learn that Durosimi O’Stoat is in possession of something resembling a sense of humour. I agree, it’s hard to countenance, but don’t take my word for it – just take a look at the picture attached to this tale.
“That isn’t Durosimi O’Stoat,” some of the more astute of you may say. “That’s Samuel Liddel MacGregor Mathers, a British occultist,” and you would be absolutely correct. So, bear with me, and all will be revealed.
You may remember that Durosimi had discovered an ancient parchment which apparently detailed, in the long dead Etruscan language, how one might open a portal to other lands. While Durosimi was confident that he could successfully translate the document, he had to bear in mind that there is always a danger when dabbling in such arcane matters, inasmuch as uttering a spell even slightly incorrectly might prove somewhat detrimental to the speaker. This might possibly entail turning him inside-out, or doing something similarly disagreeable.
Such danger would have deterred lesser men, but Durosimi has never been one to flinch from risks in the pursuance of knowledge or wealth… but he is, however, a pragmatist at heart.
“Why put yourself in danger, when you can get some sucker to do it for you?”
This had long been his motto, and, on this occasion, the sucker in question was to be Doc Willoughby.
It had taken half a bottle of single malt whisky and most of the day to convince the Doc that he was perfect for the job in hand. Although Willoughby professed to be a man of science and learning, Durosimi had always been aware that he was an out and out Quack, and, when it came down to it, not a particularly bright one, either. But Durosimi was not the sort to hold such failings against him. Besides, it made the Doc extremely easy to manipulate.
“I can’t see why you’re asking me to cast the spell,” complained the Doc, not unreasonably. “After all, you’re the sorcerer.”
“I have other responsibilities,” replied Durosimi, importantly. “It is necessary that I observe the spell unfolding from a safe dist… I mean from a sensible distance. After all, we can’t be certain exactly where the portal will materialise. Besides, the regalia doesn’t fit me properly.”
“Regalia? What regalia?” Doc Willoughby looked puzzled.
“Oh, it’s nothing much,” said Durosimi, airily. “But wearing it is a crucial part of the ceremony.”
This, of course, was total rubbish, but it amused Durosimi, and gave him the great satisfaction of making Doc look ridiculous. I have no idea how the photographic representation of MacGregor Mathers, one of the founder members of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, came into Durosimi’s keeping, but this was the inspiration for the costume that Doc was to be wearing when he cast the spell. It was, Durosimi reasoned, no more than the old fool deserved for being so gullible.
“So where is this regalia?” asked Doc. “Perhaps I should try it on. After all, it might not fit me either.”
“Oh, I can promise you, it will fit,” said Durosimi. “But you shouldn’t see it before the ceremony, or the magic won’t work properly.”
Doc was far from happy about this, but held his tongue. It is never very wise to argue with Durosimi.
According to the Etruscan parchment, the most auspicious time to open a portal is at the rising of a full moon. Durosimi had calculated that this would be at precisely 4pm on the following Monday, just two days away. Although being in daylight made the possibility of being seen much more likely, this was offset by the delicious prospect of Doc standing in his ridiculous costume in full view of anyone passing by. Durosimi almost smiled with glee.
“Have I really got to wear this?” Doc looked aghast at himself in Durosimi’s full-length mirror. The leather helmet was not too bad, he had to admit, but the moth-eaten fur stole, the faded blue cummerbund and a lady’s nightgown, pink and shapeless, were not the clothing he had envisioned himself to be wearing that day.
“Being on this wretched island means that we have to compromise here and there,” said Durosimi. “Make do and mend, and all that. It’s the intention that’s important, Willoughby old friend.”
“And why do I have to carry a skunk-cabbage stuck on the end of a broom handle? I’ll be a laughingstock.”
“Nonsense,” replied Durosimi, employing his best poker-face. “Anyway, no one will see you, and carrying the plant is an important part of the ceremony. It represents…um… growing life, and other such things. Now come on, it’s time for us to go… have you got the words to the spell?”
Doc looked furtively about him, keen not to be spotted, as the two made their way from Durosimi’s house to the nearby clearing where the portal was to be situated.
“Stand in front of these two trees, and when you hear the church clock strike four, carefully say those words that I have written,” said Durosimi, pushing Doc forward.
“Where will you be?”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,” replied Durosimi, then hurried off to shelter behind a large rock, some fifty yards away.
The church clock struck four, and Doc Willoughby began intoning the spell in the way that Durosimi had instructed. It was then that Mireille D’Illay, of Les Demoiselles de Moulin Rouge, chose to wander past. She stopped and stared at the spectacle before her in disbelief, then, with a dismissive shake of her head and a Gallic shrug, she said
“Mon Dieu, he is as mad as the English,” and continued on her way.
“Nothing seems to be happening,” Doc called to Durosimi.
“Then do it again, man. That blasted French dancer must have distracted you.“
Doc repeated the spell, this time without interruption, but the result was the same.
“I don’t know what’s gone wrong,” fumed Durosimi. He hadn’t even had the pleasure of seeing Doc being turned inside out. “I need to study this further… and for goodness sake, get those ridiculous clothes off.”
It was some hours later, and Winston Oldspot , the Night-Soil Man, ventured out on his rounds, accompanied by his friend, Mr Squash.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the night sky. “It’s the first full moon of the year.”
Mr Squash was about to reply, but suddenly stopped walking, at the same time resting his hand on Winston’s shoulder.
“Stay where you are, lad,” he said in a gruff whisper.
No more than a dozen yards in front of them, a thin sliver of vertical light rippled from between the trees, like torchlight shining through a gap in some very long curtains.
“What do you think is causing that?” asked Winston, not a little alarmed.
“I have no idea,” replied the Sasquatch, “but whatever it is, I don’t think I want to get any closer.”
Even as he spoke, the gap widened a little, bleeding a sickly-green mist into the Hopeless night…
Durosimi O’Stoat pulled his overcoat tightly around him, in a forlorn effort to keep at bay the icy wind that was blowing in from the Atlantic. He hoped it would be worth his while, following Mr Squash for yet another long night of apparently aimless wandering. It puzzled Durosimi why the Sasquatch should have chosen to return to The Squid and Teapot at Christmas; after all, there is no good reason why anyone should be celebrating the season here on this most miserable of islands, Hopeless, Maine. The sorcerer, who was inclined to judge everyone by his own set of standards, could only conclude that the Sasquatch must have had an excellent, and probably dubious, motive to want to return.
For night after night, Durosimi trudged around after Mr Squash, keeping a safe distance downwind, and ducking into shadows at the slightest hint of discovery. When, after a week, and the whole enterprise seemed to be fruitless, he finally decided to cut his losses. It was during that eleventh hour that Durosimi overheard a snatch of conversation which, while heralding no clue as to why the Sasquatch had returned, made his catalogue of discomforts almost worthwhile.
“If the need arises,” he heard Mr Squash declare to Reggie Upton, “I can always build another portal to Tibet, or, indeed, to anywhere I choose. They’re not difficult to do.”
Durosimi held no illusions that Mr Squash would let him in on his secrets, but it was enough to know that these mysterious portals had been man-made (or Sasquatch-made in this instance) and not some natural phenomenon that could never be replicated. Durosimi was confident that, if the business of building a portal could be achieved by some overgrown neanderthal (his words), then he, the greatest sorcerer in the Northern Hemisphere (again, his words, unsurprisingly), would, with the application of his genius, be able to produce something at least as wonderful, if not better.
With these thoughts in his head, and the metaphorical bit lodged firmly between his teeth, Durosimi was now totally convinced that somewhere in his formidable library, hidden in that vast assortment of ancient tomes, forbidden grimoires, therimoires, diabologues, spell-books and an almost complete set of farmers’ almanacs, would lie the secret words which would open a portal to anywhere in the world, or, who knows, even the universe.
Over the following week, anyone passing Durosimi’s window might have spotted him at any hour of the day or night, bent over a manuscript of some description, or wrestling with a huge, leather bound book. His candles were burning from dusk until dawn, for having embarked upon this quest, he refused to eat or sleep until he had found the treasure that he was seeking.
One grey, misty morning Durosimi burst through his front door and exclaimed to the world, in triumph,
“I have it!”
Doc Willoughby, who happened to be passing by, hoped that, whatever it was that Durosimi had, it wasn’t contagious. To be on the safe side, he looked him over with a wary eye. Even Doc’s limited medical expertise could detect that Durosimi was not quite as he should be. His tired eyes glowed with a wild light, and he appeared to have lost weight. His skin was as yellow as the parchment he held in his shaking hands.
“It’s Etruscan,” Durosimi said excitedly.
“I can’t say that I’ve ever treated a case of that…”
began the Doc, but Durosimi was too excited to hear him.
“It has been copied from a tablet, but the answer is here, I’m sure…” said Durosimi.
“Ah, so you’ve got a tablet,” said Doc. “Tablets are good. Be sure to take plenty.”
It was then that Durosimi realised that Doc Willoughby had no idea what he was talking about.
“Willoughby, come on in, old friend, and I’ll explain everything,” he said. “You might be able to help.”
Doc was more than happy to obey. Old friend, eh? That boded well, and whisky seemed to be involved somewhere or other whenever Durosimi wanted to include Doc in his plans. Even at nine in the morning.
“So, you see,” confided Durosimi “It’s not just the likes of Squash who can build these portals, and the proof is all here, on this piece of parchment. I must admit, my grasp of Etruscan is a little rusty. but …”
“Remind me again what Etruscan is, exactly,” said the Doc, tentatively.
“Oh, it’s an ancient language,” explained Durosimi. “Pre-Indo and Paleo-European, of course, but not dissimilar to the Raetic and Lemnian languages.”
“Ah, yes, the Lemon languages. Splendid,” said the Doc knowledgeably. “Sorry, they had temporarily slipped my mind.”
“Anyway, as I was saying,” continued Durosimi, “as far as I can make out, the words on this parchment have been copied from a tablet that was inscribed about three thousand years ago. I’m sure, with a bit of diligence, it can be translated.”
“How are you going to do that?” Doc asked, accepting another tot of whisky.
“Fortunately,” said Durosimi, “Etruscan is an agglutinative language, where words contain multiple morphemes concatenated together. Do you follow my meaning?”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Doc, emptying his glass.
“As you’ll appreciate,” went on Durosimi, “what makes the whole process of translation easier is that the language is constructed in such a manner that each word stem can be isolated and identified as indicating a particular inflection or derivation… you know, passive suffix, causative suffix, etc. on verbs, and plural suffix, accusative suffix, dative suffix, etc. on nouns. Makes it fairly simple, eh?”
“Umm… indubitably,” replied a bewildered Doc, hoping that this was going to yield at least one more glass of whisky.
“So, that’s settled, then. You’ll help me?” urged Durosimi with a smile that he hoped was not too ingratiating.
“To do what?” asked Doc, who was beginning to wish that he had stayed in bed that morning.
Durosimi sighed and poured them both another shot of whisky.
The Hopeless, Maine novella Semblance of Truth is now out in the world – published by Outland Entertainment. This is a standalone book, so if you haven’t read anything else from the island, you’ll be fine to jump in here. The only thing that blog regulars need to be aware of is that this story is an older one and people did not know fifteen years ago (when I wrote the material this developed from) where the spoons went!
If you have read the graphic novels, this book is set in about the same time frame as The Gathering. That’s Personal Demons and Inheritance in the American hardcover editions. If you have read those, you may find the wider context interesting and there are points where the two stories overlap. It doesn’t matter what order you read Semblance in, in relation to the graphic novels.
Semblance Of Truth is a story told from the perspective of Frampton Jones – the island’s reporter. Frampton is an unreliable narrator, not least because he’s being driven mad by his own camera. Hopeless is often a bemusing place for the residents, and we see more of that in action as islanders face one bizarre disaster after another.
To recap… The sorcerous lama, Dawasandup, had broken through to Hopeless via Mr Squash’s mysterious portal, scheming to take the young monk Tenzin, and Durosimi O’Stoat, back to Tibet and sacrifice them to the tiger demon, Tagsan. Philomena Bucket and Durosimi had combined their magical abilities to thwart Dawasandup, but the unexpected arrival of Tagsan had seemingly doomed both of them…
Rising to his knees, and swamped in Tagsan’s massive shadow, Dawasandup looked triumphantly at the scene spread out before him. The puny foreigner, Durosimi, who foolishly believed that he could outwit him, lay trembling beneath the huge paw of the demon, while just a few yards away lay the crumpled form of the witch, Philomena. Dawasandup had to admit that the woman had been an impressive foe, but she had failed, and like Durosimi, she would pay the price of failure. Dawasandup would give the two of them to Tagsan as a tribute and, with the demon sated, he could return home to the clean mountain air of Tibet.
These thoughts of home cheered Dawasandup. He hated this place, and marvelled at how anyone could live for more than a day on such a miserable little island. What was it called? Ah yes, Hopeless, that was it. How appropriate. A hopeless, fog-bound land for hopeless, useless people.
Dawasandup suddenly felt uneasy, and frowned at an advancing bank of fog that seemed to have an unusually well-developed sense of purpose and direction. He had lived his life with one foot firmly set in the realm of the supernatural, and believed himself to be its master, but he had never witnessed anything quite like this. The fog was alive, and appeared to be heading straight for him.
If there is one thing designed to put the ghost of Granny Bucket out of sorts, it is someone threatening her family, and this Dawasandup character and his pet tiger had managed to put themselves inextricably into her bad books. Granny, however was well aware of her limits; she had seen how the demon had fought. Luckily Granny had allies; many, many allies who would be more than keen to help.
For countless generations the women of the Bucket line had practised their witchcraft more or less quietly, and each had understood that, if necessary, not even death itself would prevent them from defending their own. Even the oldest, most primitive of them, daubed in red ochre and wearing hides and antlers, viewed the opportunity to mingle with their descendants as a pleasant day out, and happily rallied to Granny’s call. The only fly in the ointment was that they were duty-bound to protect Durosimi as well. Long-time readers of these tales may remember that, according to Doctor John Dee, a certain Melusine O’Stoat had married into the Bucket family during the sixteenth century (see the tale ‘A Remarkable Resemblance’) and Durosimi was undoubtedly a relative, albeit many times removed.
As the fog-bank drew closer, Dawasandup could make out scores of female shapes writhing within it. Terror rose within him, but then, to his great relief, the fog gradually slowed and stopped, completely enveloping Philomena. He smiled to himself, convinced that the wraiths within the fog had come to claim her body, or better still, devour it. It did not matter; he still had Durosimi to sacrifice to the demon.
The fog rolled over Philomena and, little by little grew thinner, and as it did so the forms within it faded too. When it had cleared entirely, Philomena was left as Dawasandup had last seen her, apparently dead, and lying on the cold earth. Then, to his dismay, she groaned, and with some effort, raised herslf up onto one knee.
Taking no chances, Dawasandup hurled a small ball of blue, crackling lightning at her. Without looking up, Philomena raised a hand and caught it easily. Painfully, she rose to her feet and held the glowing ball before her. To Dawasandup’s horror it quickly ballooned to about the size of a human head.
“To the death, this time,” she said, and it sounded as if a hundred voices were speaking at once.
Ignoring Dawasandup, she tossed the lightning ball at Tagsan, who tried unsuccessfully to swat it away. It bounced off his chest, leaving a livid scorch mark behind. Free of the demon’s paw, Durosimi wasted no time in scampering to what he hoped was safety.
Tagsan, wounded and angry, roared at Philomena, who merely smiled the sweetest of smiles, and extended her arms towards Dawasandup. The lama was surprised to find himself suddenly levitating, lifted higher and higher until he floated level with Tagsan’s gaping maw. Dawasandup screamed as he felt the demon’s hot breath and toxic saliva upon his body.
“Let this be your tribute, demon,” Philomena chorused. “Take it and go back from whence you came, you have no place here. Do not think that you can ever beat us, for we are legion.”
With a sickening crunch, Tagsan clamped the still screaming Dawasandup between his jaws, and, with his tribute paid, soundlessly faded into the portal between the ash trees.
“We’ve beaten him,” cried a jubilant Durosimi, forgetting that he had spent much of the battle trapped beneath the tiger demon’s paw.
“Not quite yet,” said Philomena.
Durosimi was relieved to hear that her voice had returned to its normal pitch, and no longer sounded like a great multitude when she spoke.
Philomena raised her arms once more, and the two ash trees, forming Mr Squash’s mysterious portal to Tibet, buckled and cracked, then noisily imploded, sending a thick confetti of shredded bark and leaves high into the air.
“There, now it’s finished,” she said. “The portal is closed forever.”
“What have you done?” yelled Durosimi. “That was our only way to uncover the magic and mystery of Tibet, and you have destroyed it completely.”
“My only regret is having to kill the ash trees,” she said, wearily. “And if you don’t shut your noise, you might find yourself joining them.”
Durosimi blanched. He had seen too much to argue.
Feeling quite exhausted, Philomena turned and walked away from him, wanting nothing more than to go back to her family and the safety of The Squid and Teapot.
“Ah, so you’re awake at last.” Durosimi O’Stoat fondly imagined that the ghastly rictus currently adorning his face would be regarded by his visitor as being a warm and avuncular smile.
Tenzin, the young monk who had been recently deposited upon the island of Hopeless, Maine gazed up in terror. “Who are you? he whimpered, or at least he would have done, had he realised that he was not in Tibet. What he actually said was, “ ཁྱེད་སུ་ཡིན”
Despite having recently spent several weeks in a monastery, high in the Himalayan Mountains, Durosimi had not managed to pick up a single word of the language. “Come on lad, less of that,” he said, the awful smile fading. “You’re in America now, so speak English.”
“America?” said Tenzin, his fear subsiding as he recognised the sorcerer. “How did I get there?”
“That’s what I was about to ask you,” said Durosimi. “What can you remember?”
Tenzin screwed up his face, trying to recall exactly what had happened. “Very little,” he admitted. “There was something to do with Dawasandup…” then added, “but I can’t remember what.”
This was disappointing, but at least, hearing the name of Dawasandup (the powerful anchorite who was reputed to be able to fly, have dominion over demons and kill from a distance) was reassuring. Durosimi would have felt somewhat less assured had Tenzin remembered that Dawasandup had plotted to sacrifice him to the tiger-demon, Tagsan.
“Not to worry, it’s early days yet. I am sure that your memory will return soon,” said Durosimi.
Durosimi desperately wanted to return to Tibet and – blissfully unaware of Dawasandup’s murderous plans – learn all that he could from the anchorite. Believing that Tenzin had found a way to travel unaided through Mr Squash’s mysterious portal, he was prepared to wait until the young monk’s memory had returned. In the meantime, it seemed sensible to keep Tenzin safely away from the influence of other people on the island, especially Philomena Bucket, who might be inclined to give his guest a less than favourable assessment of Durosimi’s. character.
“The island is not a particularly safe place for an unwary stranger like yourself,” Durosimi told Tenzin. “I think it best that you remain here until you have recovered completely. In fact, you could help me, if you wanted. You could become my apprentice.”
“Thank you,” said Tenzin, gratefully, placing his hands in prayer position in front of his chest, and bowing his head slightly. “I would like that.”
“Splendid!” exclaimed Durosimi.
*
“He’s up to something,” said Doc Willoughby.
It was rare for the Doc to confide in anyone else on the island, but Reggie Upton seemed less likely to gossip than most.
“In what way?” asked Reggie.
They were sitting in the snuggery of The Squid and Teapot, sharing a few glasses of the Gannicox Distillery’s best spirits.
“Durosimi is being elusive… even more so than usual,” said the Doc. “I have called upon him three times in the past week and he has made sure that I didn’t get through the front door. He’s hiding something, I’m sure.”
“Everyone thinks that he’s a changed character since going to Tibet,” said Reggie. “Less abrasive,”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Doc. “He’ll only let you see as much of what is going on as he wants you to see.”
“I always thought that you two were friends,” said Reggie, surprised as Doc’s candour.
“No, not friends,” admitted the Doc. “I keep him on-side, and he finds me useful occasionally. Durosimi doesn’t have friends.”
“Well, whatever it is that he is keeping hidden,” said Reggie, “I’m sure that all will be revealed – for good or ill – before very long.”
Two weeks had passed since Tenzin’s arrival on the island. During that time he had made sure that Durosimi’s home was spick and span from top to bottom. He was beginning to wonder when his apprenticeship was going to start. He was not so much the sorcerer’s apprentice as the sorcerer’s domestic help. Every day Durosimi would ask him if his memory had returned, and every day he had to shake his head and say “no, sorry.”
Then one morning everything came flooding back. His escape from Dawasandup; the flight into the mountains; his meeting with one of the Spirits of the Glaciers, and the way in which he was brought to Hopeless. This was exciting. He could not wait to tell Durosimi.
As he told his tale, Tenzin failed to notice the sorcerer’s face growing darker and darker.
When he had finished he was conscious of a long and ominous silence.
Then Durosimi spoke. “So you got here, not by your own efforts, but the same as the rest of us. Dragged through by some blasted Yeti.”
Tenzin nodded, not sure where this conversation was going.
“And I have wasted precious weeks waiting for some grand revelation that was never going to arrive.”
“But I couldn’t remember…” stammered Tenzin.
“That’s no good to me, and come to that, neither are you,” growled Durosimi. “You need to go before I do something that you will regret.”
“Go? But where,” said Tenzin, helplessly.
“Go where every misfit on this god-forsaken place goes,” said Durosimi. “To The Squid and Teapot – now clear off.”
Tenzin had no idea where, or indeed what, The Squid and Teapot might be. He wandered through the fog for hours until he bumped into a bemused Septimus Washwell. Sensing a moment of glory, Septimus was happy to escort the exotic stranger to the inn, where he led him through the impressive oak doors and into the oasis of light and cheer that was the bar of The Squid and Teapot.
To Septimus’ dismay the room fell to silence. Everyone stared suspiciously at the young man with the shaven head and sandalled feet. His burgundy robes were splattered with mud.
“Look who I found wandering about,” said Septimus.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Reggie Upton. “He’s a monk of some description. You had better leave this to me.”
He strode up to the newcomer and did what any Englishman would do in like circumstances.
“DO YOU SPEAK ANY ENGLISH?” he shouted. His words came out slowly and deliberately.
To everyone’s surprise the monk quietly replied,
“Yes, perfectly, thank you. I am Tenzin,” and he gave a small bow.
Reggie smiled uncomfortably, a little embarrassed by the way he had addressed Tenzin, but things now began to make sense.
If this chap wasn’t the reason that Doc Willoughby had been excluded from Durosimi’s company, then he would eat his hat.
Early on in the life of this book, the working title was Sins of the Fathers – as that’s very much what’s driving the story. Specifically, the fathers of our main characters.
Salamandra O’Stoat is the daughter of a rather unpleasant occultist called Durosimi who – with more ambition than wisdom – has managed to become a vampire. With the whole vampire/consumption plot under way, Salamandra has the awkward issue of dealing with a problem that has probably been caused by her father.
Owen Davies is the son of Reverenced Davies and we’d be getting into the realm of plot spoilers if I told you too much about his plot line through this book. Fair to say that none of it is easy for Owen as his father does something truly terrible.
If you’re a regular on the blog, you’ll mostly know the fathers from their regular appearances in The Squid and Teapot. here we find their more everyday selves. Reverend Davies tends to be austere and ineffectual, Durosimi is always plotting something but seldom gets what he wants. They’d both be a lot more harmful if they were competent, but thankfully most of the time they are not that effective. In Sinners, they both manage to cause a lot of harm.
Having secretly followed Durosimi O’Stoat into the Underland, Winston Oldspot, Hopeless Maine’s newest Night-Soil Man, found himself in the mysterious Crystal Cave. While Durosimi had mastered some of the secrets of the cave, and could use it as a portal to Elizabethan England, Winston had no such skill, and was, instead, deposited onto a seemingly never ending woodland path. Eventually he came upon a sign informing him that he was walking along something called the Appalachian Trail, and heading for Mount Katahadin, in Maine. This, at least, was good news. Winston knew that he lived on an island in the state of Maine, and reasoned to himself that, in that case, he could not be too far away from Hopeless.
How wrong could he be? The Night-Soil Man had been walking for hours, without food or water. What he had hoped would be a short stroll home had become a gruelling, endless torment. Night had fallen and Winston felt afraid, vulnerable, and – more than anything else – exhausted. He dragged himself into a natural shelf scooped out beneath some tree roots, and fell into a deep, bone-weary, sleep.
Mr Squash had been patrolling parts of the Appalachian Trail pretty much since the very first sections were opened, back in nineteen twenty-three. He had, over the years, walked its entire length at least a hundred times, he reckoned. During that time he had made it his business to look out for the welfare of the trail’s many hikers, and keep them safe from bears, cougars and anything else that might threaten them. Not that everyone was grateful, but that didn’t stop Mr Squash. He had learned that he could be anonymous, keep back in the trees, and still help the folks who walked along the trail. Not all were hikers, though. There were some who came out here to do no more than whoop, bang sticks on the trunks of trees and generally try to raise Cain. Sometimes he had the distinct feeling that they were making all that fuss just to grab his attention. Heck, one or two fools had even been known to pour some sort of white muck into his footprints. Much as he was happy to help anyone, he wasn’t in the business of making friends with them. No sir! He had seen the sort of mess that friendships like that can make too many times.
It was the stink that first grabbed his attention. It reminded Mr Squash of some of the less thoughtful hikers who left their scat uncovered too close to the trail. It was a smell which was pretty much like that, but a hundred times stronger. Not that it bothered him. Smells – natural smells, at any rate – were a fact of life. Why, he had even heard himself described as being smelly. That was rubbish, of course, but this fellow sleeping under the tree roots was more than a little ripe.
I ought to mention that Mr Squash was fully nine feet tall and covered in thick, chestnut-brown hair. His face was neither human, nor ape, but somewhere in between. You could understand why his appearance might cause fear, but it is never wise to judge by outward appearances. Mr Squash had hidden abilities. When he put a huge, leathery hand on Winston’s brow, the young Night-Soil Man’s history was revealed to Mr Squash as easily as if it had been in a book (in fact, as Mr Squash was somewhat less than literate, Winston’s life, revealed in book-form, would have remained a total mystery to him). The Sasquatch, Skunk Ape, Bigfoot, call him what you will (but always Mr Squash to his face, of course) hefted the sleeping Winston into his arms as easily as if he were a feather, and carried him away from the trail to a place where two big old trees had fallen into each other’s branches, like reunited lovers. Their trunks formed an archway, through which Mr Squash carried Winston, and immediately disappeared.
The Night-Soil Man yawned, stretched and lay, for a few moments, with his eyes closed. The soft earth of the cave was beneath him, and he realised, with some relief, that he must have nodded off to sleep when the storm was raging outside. He recalled how he had been plunged into some very strange dreams; dreams that were now quickly fading. With a sigh, he picked up his bucket, secured the lid, and made his way to the cleft in the rocks, which had led him into the cavern. It was still not daylight outside, so he couldn’t have been there for too long.
Mr Squash had been around for too many years not to know where the secret portals lay. How many times had he wandered into a cave, or through some other natural gateway, to find himself far away from his intended destination? This morning, however, he was exactly where he needed to be, looking out onto the island of Hopeless, Maine. He had visited the place a few times before and, quite honestly, was not too fond of it. There were not enough trees here for his liking. But it seemed to be the place where the stinky kid called home, though. Standing in deep shadow he watched Winston make his way along the headland. He felt almost fatherly to the boy. Maybe he would stick around for a while and keep an eye out for him. He knew how hazardous the island could be. But not hazardous for him, of course. Nothing much ever troubled Mr Squash.
Author’s note: As you may know, the Appalachian Trail is about two thousand two hundred miles long. It runs from Georgia to Maine, passing through no less than fourteen states.