Long Chills Page 5

  “Aye,” whispered Katie regretfully. She pulled her shawl aside, revealing a mottled mass of scar tissue that had once been a slender and flawless throat. “He returned, scarcely a month ago.”

  “But why were all here destroyed…except for you?”

  Katie Danaher smiled grimly. “That is the way of Arget Bethir,” she explained. “He and his clan destroy and devour, but leave one behind to carry on the bloodline of the Beast.” A single tear trickled down the woman’s freckled cheek. “And, in the case of Ballyvaughan, I was the chosen one.”

  Abruptly, as if awaiting such a grand and fitting entrance, a silvery gleam flowed through the shattered windows of the cottage behind him. Ian turned and saw the great white orb of that month’s full moon blazing above the crashing waves of Galway Bay.

  Startled, Ian looked toward his only sibling. Katie rose slowly from her bench. “I am sorry, brother. Truly sorry. But the accursed hunger…”

  Ian recalled the ravenous desire of his dreams. “I understand.”

  It was then that Katie surrendered to the awful curse of the bite she had sustained. She stretched her arms heavenward and unleashed an ear-shattering howl of inner torment. Ian watched, mortified, as the beautiful lass who had served as his surrogate mother since his second year began to change into something horrid and hideous.

  Katie’s limbs began to stretch and contort, her height and breadth tearing her clothing asunder, exposing her for a moment, before a down of coarse coppery fur spread across her naked flesh. Her once beautiful features stretched and buckled as the bones of her skull cracked open and shattered, then grew anew in monstrous rejuvenation. Soon her jagged ears brushed the high timbers of the ceiling as she snarled, bearing wolfish fangs as long as Ian’s forefinger.

  With a howl, she tossed the heavy oaken eating table aside with a sweep of one massive claw. With a fever of undeniable bloodlust in her huge green eyes, she started toward him, her savage breasts swinging to and fro like furry pendulums.

  Ian simply stood there, as still as a stone, waiting. Then, when she was nearly within reach, the hellfire of her breath searing the fine red hairs of his eyelashes, he whirled and reached overhead…to the gleam of silver above the doorway.

  He felt sharp talons skim across his forehead, drawing blood, as he brought the knife around and buried the blade deeply into the center of her chest. The edge slid smoothly through hair and flesh, between the slats of her ribcage and into her heart.

  The she-wolf howled in anguish as a sulfurous stench filled the air and the dark smoke of burning tissue erupted from her torso. She dropped to her knees, her arms outstretched, pleading. Ian watched with tears in his eyes as she slowly resumed human form and collapsed, naked, on the hardwood boards of the cottage floor.

  He stuck the silver dagger in the belt of his robe and knelt beside his dying sister. “Katie!” he sobbed. “Oh, dear one…I am so very sorry.”

  “I do not share your sorrow, brother,” she whispered, staring up at him lovingly. “I now go to Lord Jesus and our Maker…as well as to the bosom of our family.”

  “Bless you, sister,” he said softly.

  Then she was gone.

  Afterward, he fetched a shovel and pick from the tool shed out back and broke earth. He buried her pale and freckled body at the northern side of the cottage, next to the rose bushes she cherished so. He didn’t dare bury her in the abandoned garden…not anywhere near that repulsive thing that had caused such grief and pain to his mother and father.

  As the horse reached the summit of the sea-swept cliffs, Ian Danaher breathed in the bracing chill of the evening, trying desperately to drive the awful events of his visit to Ballyvaughan from his thoughts. He turned his eyes heavenward, staring into the starry sky, hoping to find solace there. But the stark and obscenely obtrusive orb of the full moon stared back at him, searing the memory of his cursed sibling forever in his mind.

  As he reined his steed eastward, he suddenly smelled a thick, musky scent on the breeze. The horse caught it before he did, its nostrils flaring with fright. It reared up suddenly, tossing him from the saddle. As Ian hit the ground hard, knocking the breath from his lungs, the horse turned and, without a moment’s hesitation, leapt from the edge of the cliff, to a watery death.

  “What happened?” he muttered, rising shakily to his feet.

  “We did,” answered a deep and arrogant voice.

  He peered into the darkness to the east and saw a multitude of golden eyes staring at him, reflecting in the glow of the moon like those of a pack of hounds.

  Then, into the moonlight, stepped a tall man and his band of hellish followers. The leader towered proudly, lean and muscular, dressed in a flowing cape of dark crimson and a golden codpiece in the shape of a leering wolf’s head across his loins. In one hand he brandished a broadsword encased in solid gold, its handle bound in hide that looked more human than animal in nature.

  His face was angular and clean-shaven. His head was graced with a long mane of silvery hair and, beneath bushy silver brows, gleamed eyes as bright and blue as chiseled sapphire.

  Ian had no doubt whatsoever of who stood before him.

  “Arget Bethir!” he gasped.

  The warrior threw back his head and laughed. “Aye, some do call me that. Others McManus the Beast. But most surely, I am Death to all.” He paused and regarded his reinforcements; men grim of visage and riddled with horrid scars and disfigurement. “Except for my clan, that is. Those I have spawned from my own damnation.”

  “Blast you, fiend!” Ian said, his anger getting the best of him. “For the evil you have wrought upon mankind…and upon my own kin!”

  McManus took a step forward, regarding him with amusement… and something more. “I know you, holy man,” he said. “From my dreams.”

  Ian stood there, aware that he was doomed, with no place to go. Nowhere but over the cliffs and into the sea…as the terrified steed had done.

  Arget Bethir displayed a great, toothy smile. “You know, Brother Danaher, we have just come from the most glorious banquet.” His icy blue eyes glittered and gleamed, full of insolence and cruelty. “A feast unlike any we have partaken of during our many conquests. The tastiest of marrow, the most tender of sweetbreads, and the flesh itself… virginal and untainted by the poisons of gregarious living! Twenty-four lambs for the slaughter…sent to us by their precious Shepherd.”

  Twenty-four, thought Ian. Why did that number strike such dread into his heart?

  The warrior’s grin grew even broader. “By the way, your master sends his greetings!” Then with a flourish, he took something from beneath his cloak and tossed it at the young priest. The object rolled, crown over stump, several times before finally coming to rest at Ian’s feet.

  It was the head of Father O’Shaughnessy. The eyes and tongue looked as though they had been gouged out and devoured.

  All thought of defiance bled away from the horrified monk and, defeated by the knowledge of Arget Bethir’s blasphemous feast, he felt close to fainting. All strength drained from his legs and he dropped to his knees in the wind-swept clover.

  McManus laughed loudly. “Look upon this servant of God, my legion! As we have seen during the past two nights, faith is not all that it is claimed to be. Like the grain of a mustard seed? More like feet of clay, if you ask me.”

  Ian raised tormented eyes toward the fiend that had slaughtered everything – and everyone – he had ever loved in his lifetime. “So now what? You shall feast upon me as well?”

  “You tempt me with your words, holy man,” said Arget Bethir. “But I have other plans for you. For you see, whenever I make a conquest, I…”

  “Leave one behind to carry on the bloodline,” finished Ian.

  “Aye, either that or to join my ranks in battle.” McManus shed his crimson drape, then unbuckled the golden codpiece. Soon his weapon and garments were lying discarded upon the earth. Naked, he stood in the moonlight, every inch of flesh exposed and prepared. “The choice i
s yours.”

  “I choose the embrace of my Lord and Savior,” Ian declared. His defiance returned and, rising to his feet, he turned toward the edge of the bluff.

  “I think not, Danaher!” bellowed McManus. Swiftly, much more swiftly than poor Katie had managed, the silver-haired warrior transformed from an arrogant bastard of an Irishman into a snarling beast from the fetid bowels of Purgatory.

  Ian had only gone a few steps when the fiend was upon him. He felt a great weight upon his back, spinning him, slamming him forcefully to the ground. He watched with growing horror as the fangs of the Silver Beast plunged downward. Hungrily, they tore through his gray robe and the fragile flesh underneath. He screamed in agony as they chewed and gnawed, rending muscle and sinew of his chest to bloody shreds. The beast’s gnarled fingers then hooked within his ribcage and forced it apart, shattering his sternum into a thousand tiny fragments. Soon, his inner organs were exposed and prime for the taking.

  Arget Bethir leered ravenously and ran a coarse pink tongue along his yellowed teeth. His massive blue eyes locked on the pulsating muscle of Ian Danaher’s naked heart. “The most succulent prize of all!” he snarled in a voice that was half man and half wolf. The words echoed mockingly in Ian’s ears, mirroring those he himself had uttered during that awful vision in the dining hall of the monastery.

  Ian watched, mortified, as the great silver wolf lowered its massive head once again, preparing to feast upon the writhing sack of his heart. With fading consciousness, he remembered his only source of defense and, drawing it from his belt, lashed out.

  The fiend howled in agony as the silver dagger carved a sizzling line across the flat of his hirsute belly. Arget Bethir stumbled backward, away from the deadly threat of the precious metal. He knew very well that disaster would befall him if it penetrated and entered his body.

  Before the creature could recover and launch another attack, Ian struggled to his feet and stumbled toward his salvation.

  “You will not succeed in thwarting me, Danaher!” the Beast howled.

  “The bite has sealed your fate. You shall now – and forever – be my accursed spawn!”

  Then, with a prayer upon his dying lips, Ian Danaher stepped off the precipice and surrendered himself to God…and the sea.

  He woke with the roar of the tide in his ears and wet sand as a bed beneath his aching bones.

  Ian opened his eyes and stared into a clear blue sky. Gulls flew overhead, calling out shrilly, as if heralding the young man’s return to a world much darker and more savage than the one he had known a scant week ago.

  He sat up and looked down at his chest. It was no longer laid open. Instead of a bloody crater full of glistening organs, it was whole again. The bones of his ribcage and sternum had reformed; his torn and tattered flesh was now a pale mass of smooth white scar tissue.

  So the demon known as Arget Bethir had been correct. Ian’s dive into the jagged rocks and churning waters of the sea had not thwarted McManus’s handiwork. The spawn of the Beast’s latest conquest had survived to live an eternity, branded with the curse of the lycanthrope.

  As Ian struggled to his feet, the tide rushed in, pooling around his feet. He stared down at his reflection and was shocked to find that his hair was no longer a sandy red hue. During the terror of his ordeal upon the cliff, the color had been bleached from each and every strand, leaving it as stark and white as a driven snow.

  Exhausted, but alive, he started down the coastline. Further on, he discovered the carcass of O’Shaughnessy’s horse where it had washed upon the beach. Ian’s possessions were still secured to the saddle. The bagpipes were broken, but repairable.

  Without the aid of a sturdy mount to quicken his pace, it took four days to reach the abbey at Kells. As he had suspected, his brethren had suffered the worst slaughter imaginable. Entering the monastery, he found their remains scattered throughout the halls and corridors of the place. Blood splattered the stone walls and settled in stagnant puddles upon the floors. Only the bones of the twenty-four savaged souls remained… cracked open, the marrow devoured from their hollows.

  He discovered the headless remains of his mentor, Father O’Shaughnessy, in the meditation garden. His bones lay sprawled and stripped of flesh at the very edge of the Gaelic fountain. Ian knew what he had come there for. The young friar reached into the falling currents of the fountain, searched for a moment, then found the iron box. When he opened it, he discovered not only the stone cross that O’Shaughnessy had held in his hand, but a smaller one as well, bearing the same crimson gem.

  Reluctantly, he took the larger amulet and placed it around his neck with the aid of a golden chain. A sensation of weakness filled his body, as though the talisman diminished the new and awful power that the bite of the werewolf had bestowed upon him. “It shall keep the Beastie at bay,” he whispered softly.

  If the horror of his brethren’s terrible demise was not enough, Ian experienced even more when he entered the long chamber where he and the others once spent the day, transcribing the words of Christ and embellishing it with detailed illustrations and illuminations. The manuscript – the work of forty long years as of that date – had been blasphemously destroyed. Its pages lay scattered about the room, ripped to shreds and smeared with the feces of wolves.

  Standing there, surrounded by the savaged words of the Divinity, Ian Danaher made a solemn vow. “Someday, you shall cast eyes upon me again, Arget Bethir, but not as the weak and helpless priest I was on the cliffs of Galway. I shall destroy your rampant evil and cast you back into the fiery depths of the Hell from which you were conceived. But I cannot allow vengeance and rage to rule me now. First and foremost, my mission is that of the Lord.”

  Then, solemnly, he rolled up his sleeves and set to work.

  With the passage of time, a legend evolved in the County of Meath. The legend of the Haunted Abbey of Kells.

  It was said that an entire order of monks vanished during a night wrought with blood-curdling screams and bestial howls. Following their strange disappearance, the great stone monastery stood, deserted and dark…except for a ghostly light emanating from a single chamber.

  Once, it was said that a boy herding goats late in the evening gathered the courage to look through the chamber’s window. There he saw an apparition; a lone man hunched over a desk, tirelessly at work with parchment, ink, and quill. The flickering glow of a single lamp revealed the face of a man near the brink of madness. A face adorned with a flowing white beard and eyes that had laid witness to evil beyond human comprehension.

  Frightened, the boy had hustled his herd onward. Later, he heard the ghostly sound of bagpipes echoing from the ruins behind him.

  The legend of the great stone abbey circulated for many generations, talked about in public houses and as bedtime tales for many an Irish child. But, abruptly, it seemed that the ghost who occupied its halls and chambers had abandoned its fretful haunting. The flame of the lamp grew cold and the chamber of its origin remained dark forever after.

  Then, one frosty October morn, a chimneysweep who was bold of spirit and nerve decided to explore the abbey himself. His intention was merely to have something fresh to boast and brag about at Keenan’s Pub in town. But what he discovered there was much more lasting and, eventually, contributed to the rich history of his fellow countrymen.

  For lying atop a dusty and deserted oaken desk, was a manuscript of celestial proportions. A finely and lovingly crafted collection of the holy Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, transcribed in flawless calligraphy and embellished with the most elaborate illustrations that any religious tome had possessed until that time.

  The glorious Book of Kells would one day gain a treasured place in the library of Trinity College in Dublin. Thought to be the greatest achievement in Irish manuscript illumination, it was destined to be known as “the fountainhead of Irish inspiration”, or so said the author James Joyce.

  Many believed that dozens, or even hundreds of dedicated monks had be
en involved in its making. Little did they know, that during its glorious resurrection, all work had been accomplished by a single hand during a period of a hundred and twenty years.

  But the legend did not end there. For, following the discovery of the beloved Gospels, the chimneysweep came upon another, far more haunting, transcription. Written in Gaelic, it was etched deeply into the surface of the desk on which the manuscript was found.

  Those words became the substance of folklore and countless tales throughout the ages.

  “From a sacrifice of the purest of souls, sprang a blessed tome as precious as gold. Now that God’s work be done, His vengeance goeth forth in the form of one. Beware, fiend of silver, your end be near…for upon your heels trails Milcean Bethir.”

  The White Beast.

  Tanglewood

  Tanglewood / n. (from the Irish Gaelic aimhreidh adhmad)

  An impenetrable stand of vegetation

  A secretive lair

  A place of entrapment

  I took the shortcut occasionally, when I was hard-pressed for time.

  It was a lonely thoroughfare off the left-hand side of the highway, a rambling dirt stretch called Tanglewood Road. It cut through a particularly desolate stand of woods, but conveniently so, bypassing the bothersome curves of State Route 443 and reconnecting on its eastern side, slicing a good fifteen minutes off your traveling time.

  I was running late that afternoon. I’d taken my black lab, Midnight, to the vet for his annual shots, but it had taken longer than I had expected. The clock on the dash of my jeep read 3:47 where it would have read 3:00 if things had gone according to plan. I saw the dirt turnoff up ahead and steered off the highway into the shady stretch of Tanglewood Road, hoping that it would buy me some much needed time.

  I could imagine Karla at home – waiting, fuming. We were supposed to be at her boss’s house at Center Hill Lake at four o’clock, for some sort of company outing. Burgers and hot dogs, lewd jokes and too much drinking, at least for my taste. Maybe a late night excursion on Phil Jenson’s pontoon boat; more laughter, more alcohol, and, before it was over with, a few uninhibited souls skinny-dipping in the dark waters of the lake.