What October Brings Read online

  Then there was a rustle of fabric and a flash of yellow to his left.

  He turned to see what it was.

  His bladder finished what it had started moments ago.

  The Yellow man stood before him, over seven feet tall if he was an inch. He looked taller still, for he wore a spiked and spired crown of gold on his hooded head. Standing this close, Andy could see that the robe was in tatters but was immaculately clean, and that the copper stench of blood radiated from this crowned king in yellow. He could also see inside the folds on the hood. The king wore a cracked and pitted pale mask. It looked dull, like bone. Was it ivory? Its only feature was two eye holes and the two eyes beneath…

  …Pain. Wounds. Blood. Loss. Tears. Sickness. Infection. Futility. Hopelessness. Meaninglessness. Despair. Desire. Time. Age. Rot. Rust. Decay. Stink. Entropy. Entirety. Cruelty. Savagery. Blackness. Void. War. Slaughter. Death. Death. Death…Truth.

  Somehow Andy managed to tear his gaze away, his eyes blurry, wet, and leaking. The King reached out with a tawny-bandaged hand, yellowed and crusted, log-nailed and dripping, and oh so gently took Andy’s trembling hand. He spread the fingers and placed something it his palm: his knife, already locked in the T punch dagger position. The robed one then carefully closed Andy’s hand, making a fist, and patted his white knuckles. He then leaned in and whispered something in a voice of rusty coffin nails pulled free and the unsheathing of misericordes.

  “Andy, you peed your pants!”

  Andy turned around to a voice both familiar and not. He expected to see…something…someone? Instead he saw another sheet-clad monster, all lopsided and lumpy. Filthy, reeking, and… it wore a cheap, plastic, kiddy Halloween mask. Some superhero, blond hair, blue eyes, helmet…what was his name?

  Andy turned to ask The King, he would know, he knew everything, but he was gone.

  “Andy?” He felt a tug on his sleeve.

  Andy turned and roared at the sheet-ghost-thing that clutched at his arm. Not with fear, not to frighten, it was communication at its most primal: raw, savage, and so right. It felt so good. It felt true.

  He knew what he had to do. What you always had to do with monsters. He punched out with his already clenched fist. And again. And again. And when the figure fell, he went down with it, mounted it, and punched and punched and punched…

  Andy heard screams. He heard shouts of both fear and anger. He heard an “Oh my God!” and a “Stop it!” and a “…just a kid!” and laugher. That last sound came from him. And as he rose and looked at a half-dozen sheet-covered monsters, most running away, some staring at him, one filming him with an iPhone, he knew why he laughed. He knew why he was so filled with joy despite all the monsters in the world. At last, long, long last, his mask was off. This was him, the real him, his true face, and killing was as natural as breathing, blinking, or pissing. So he withdrew his fist from the warm, sticky mess beneath him, pulled his splattered arm back, ready to punch out again and again, and with a laugh he charged the nearest monster.

  No Other God but Me

  Adrian Cole

  October’s a weird month. Sometimes you get an Indian summer, and days are more like the good ones in August. Other years it’s like November’s come early, with high winds, seas fuming and a deep chill settling under clouds that never disperse. Here on the north coast of South Western England, where the villages jut out into the Celtic Sea before it merges with the open Atlantic, we notice the cold. Our climate is pretty mild, even in the autumn. Maybe this change they keep talking about had something to do with events two years back. When all hell woke and came visiting.

  People think it began with the vicar, Martin Shute. The way he died and all. They found his body one morning, down on the beach. It was a mess: the gulls had already flocked in to feast on it. They eat anything, not just fish: food waste, chips they can pinch off tourists, even human flesh if it’s available. The police reckoned it was the birds who’d picked Shute clean, but I don’t see how they could have leeched all his blood and flown off with half his bones. Maybe they knew there was something nastier at work, but they couldn’t figure it out. They did admit it was unusual – their word – for so much religious stuff to be scattered around the priest’s remains. A number of small crucifixes, a Bible and a prayer book, both badly torn up, a couple of silver salvers from the church, crumpled like paper and a miniature Jesus statue.

  It didn’t need a genius to know someone was taking the piss out of Shute’s Christianity. It was an act of violation, coupled with the killing. Someone suggested sacrifice, but the police were prepared to consider it religious mania, the work of nutters. They combed our village, Rooksands, but found nothing, no clues. The national press had a wonderful time and we suffered TV people milling around, as bad as the gulls, but once the trail went cold with nothing new to add, they all took off back to look for something else to gorge on.

  The Reverend Shute was found at 5:00 AM on October 1. Three weeks later, Rooksands was almost back to normal. The police maintained a watch, an ‘incident room’ in the Parish Hall, so they could continue their investigations, but the fact was, they were going backwards.

  Like I said, people think it began with the vicar. Me and most of the villagers knew otherwise, but we weren’t about to blab to the police. They’d have taken us for lunatics if we had. Mind you, Shute’s death was the last straw for us. I’d been saying for a long time we needed to take action ourselves. No one liked that, or my suggestions, but the death of the holy man broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Maybe it did some good, though I’d not have seen Shute slaughtered like he was. He’d been a good man. Naïve, but kind.

  So where did this nightmare begin? I’d say two years ago. I was one of the first people to know about it, because I spend a lot of time at sea. I don’t make my living as a fisherman, like a lot of the Rooksands men, but I have a small boat and I like to go out into the bay for mackerel, or sometimes I’ll go for something much bigger. I’m fifty and I retired early. Drove big trucks for most of my working life, never married (came close twice) and put enough money aside to keep me going. Bought an old cottage in Rooksands, where I grew up, and modernised it. I like the simple life.

  Only life in Rooksands wasn’t so simple. Not once the killings started. Make no mistake, they were killings. I know they were seen as accidents and at first it seemed like they were – people lost at sea in storms, others carelessly falling from the local cliffs. Easy to dismiss them as freakish. The coast and sea here are a harsh environment. There’s an old village further along the coast, Trewithick Hole that was almost dragged off the shore and flattened in a horrendous storm back in 1922. All that was left was a few broken-down houses, like huge gravestones. Tourists like to visit the place and I know Tom Kellow makes a bob or two taking his Ghost Walks along there.

  So a handful of local deaths – with no trace of any of the bodies – could be attributed to freak weather. Some of us in the village suspected something worse. Trouble was, the things we saw weren’t credible. I mean, this land is stiff with legends. Down in Cornwall they have the Beast of Bodmin, a big cat or something that chews up sheep and the like. Never been caught. I know people who’ve seen the thing, but as far as the world is concerned, it’s a myth, a night shadow.

  The things out in our bay are the same. Like the night Davey Smale and I was out fishing for shark. Thought we’d hooked a big one, but when we got it into the boat, we had a shock. At first I thought it was an oversize squid, almost as big as me, only we don’t get them here. It must’ve come up from beyond the Atlantic shelf. We had a hard time killing it and Davey suffered nasty damage to his arm from the thing’s suckers. We got it back to my place and stuck it in one of my small outbuildings. Covered it with a tarpaulin. Next morning the door was ripped off its hinges and the thing was gone. Tarpaulin was shredded. Worse than all that, Maurice Tiddy, a neighbour, had lost two dogs. We found enough blood to suggest fo
ul play.

  Davey Smale and I described the thing we’d brought ashore to the police, but it didn’t help them. Soon after that the so-called accidents began. Five people lost, two local and three holiday-makers. All in bad weather, in some cases in the middle of summer. I’d found some weird tracks along the narrow beaches, leading into the sea, and the villagers complained about a stench that hung over the water, like something huge had died out there, a whale maybe. But there was no carcass washed up. I don’t reckon anyone would have suspected what I did. They might be superstitious, but the world isn’t so small any more. They like practical explanations.

  My trucking days had taken me all over Europe. I’d heard some strange tales. I’d met sailors and travellers who’d picked up word of things at sea, things they said explained what I’d dragged out of the deeps that time. Creatures that lived out in the ocean and worshipped gods most of us never heard of. Mostly it had struck me as rubbish, the booze talking, or just someone spinning a good yarn to entertain us on the long nights on the road.

  It struck me, though, that Rooksands needed to defend itself from whatever was out in the bay. At first everyone laughed it off. The nasty death of the vicar brought the village to its senses. While the police were nosing around, trying to make sense of things, I had a small posse visit me. Tom Kellow, Davey Smale and Kelvin Dobbs, spokesmen for the rest. They were good, honest men, hard workers all. They’d put their necks on the line to help you if need arose.

  “You were right,” Davey told me. “About fetching help. The police are stumped.”

  “They will be,” I said, “as long as they’re looking for answers on land. You boys know where the real problem lies. It’s out there in the bay.”

  Tom nodded. “My ghost stories are based on legends and the like, though I don’t believe in ghosts myself. You’re right, though. Whatever did that to the vicar, isn’t normal.”

  “It was a warning,” I told them. “Martin thought he could use his Christianity to ward off those things. It took a lot of guts for him to recognise the problem and stand up to it. You saw what they did to him. His God wasn’t strong enough to defend him.”

  Before Shute’s death, the three men would have been appalled by that kind of comment, but not now. They were frightened, and none of us was sleeping well.

  “The whole village has been talking,” said Kelvin, who’d been radically opposed to bringing in any outside help. He’d changed his tune, big time. He really was scared. “I don’t mind admitting I was against it, but what sort of help can we get?”

  “This is something outside normal bounds. That’s why Martin’s religion didn’t work. This goes way, way back. Primitive, you know?”

  They were all nodding.

  “We have to fight fire with fire. We have to bring in someone who really knows about this stuff.”

  Tom scowled. “You’re talking about witchcraft?”

  “In a way. But not the twisted medieval version. Wicca craft, the craft of the wise. Maybe even older stuff. We need a shaman.”

  Again, they would have scoffed at the idea once, but not now. “Any port in a storm,” said Tom, trying to make light of it, but the others were as serious as they could be.

  “You know one?” asked Kelvin. He’d always been impressed by my tales of wandering and the world outside, not having travelled much himself.

  “I think so. There’s someone on the edge of Dartmoor. She’s not a freak, or a hermit, or anything like that—”

  “She?” said Davey. “Then you are talking about a witch?”

  “Morgana wouldn’t call herself that, but she does have that old kind of wisdom. She’s no fool. I reckon she’d be able to help.”

  “How soon can you get her?” said Tom.

  “As soon as I can. We need to act quickly. I reckon whatever is out there in the bay will be coming at us soon.”

  Davey swore. “What – an invasion?”

  “Something like that. No one will be safe.”

  ***

  I spoke to her on the telephone. I’d never met her, though I’d seen her on local television. She wrote books on the occult as well as herbal stuff, and had done well for herself. She must have been about forty, and from what I’d seen of her, looked like she spent a lot of time outdoors, probably on the Moors. She spoke with a cultured but natural voice, very assured and easily deflected some of the more sceptical questions her interviewers like to taunt her with. My initial awkwardness at contacting her dissipated quickly: it was almost like she’d been expecting my call.

  “Rooksands?” she said. “That’s not far from Trewithick Hole, right? I know the place. Can we meet there? Given what you’ve told me, we better make it soon.”

  Two days later I drove along the winding cliff road to the open area above the cove where the remains of Trewithick Hole poked up like huge tombstones above the rocks. The road was narrow, pitted and in places overgrown, ending in an open area that had been fenced off. The fencing was dilapidated and dangerous, though few people came here unsupervised.

  Morgana was already here, her four-wheel drive parked close to the winding path down into the cove. She was dressed in a thick woollen jumper and jeans, her raven hair piled up and pinned. Her face was all angles, too sharp to be pretty, but she was an attractive woman. Her eyes were mesmeric, a steely gray. We shook hands and I was surprised at the strength of her grip.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said.

  “I’ve been here before.” She looked down at the sea as it rolled into the cove, for once subdued, although I knew how treacherous those currents would be.

  We exchanged a few pleasantries, but she was obviously eager to get on with the business and led us down the path. Some attempts had been made to shore up its worst sections, and we said little as we concentrated on getting down to the crumbling village. There was a quay, which was also in danger of disintegrating, and the curved sweep of a narrow jetty. We walked out on to it.

  She studied the swirling waters inside the miniature breakwater it made. I was looking at the ruined houses. Not much left of them now, just a wall here and there, or a shed or two. All the roofs had long fallen in and much of the debris had been swept out to sea.

  “What’s happened at Rooksands,” said Morgana. “Also happened here, at the time of the 1922 storm. It wasn’t a natural one, although that’s how it was reported and recorded. The cliffs here have been collapsing for years. It’s a notorious stretch of coast. That night the village finally succumbed was part of something else.” She indicated the sea beyond the jetty. Its waves today were gentle, undulating almost invitingly.

  “The things inhabiting the deep waters came.” She was cool, almost casual. “They took many of the villagers back into the deeps. The records show people were caught by the unusually high tide. Some fell into the sea when chunks of the land fell away like sand. It was far more sinister than that.”

  She stared down at the waters below us, her body statuesque for a moment, then she suddenly drew back as if she’d seen something, watching the waters more closely. I couldn’t see anything other than shadows, but her perception of things was more acute than mine.

  “It’s the seventeenth,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time. They’re here. They don’t usual risk exposure by day. Tell your villagers to keep away from the sea.”

  “I doubt I’ll be able to keep the fishermen from going out.”

  “It’ll be Samhain in just over two weeks.” She pronounced it ‘Sah-when’. “They’ve already discredited the Christian god. And they’ll know I’m here. I’ve fought them before. They’d like to discredit the Old Magic. Samhain would suit them as a testing time. We have to prepare, and quickly. Take me to the village.”

  Her extraordinary presence and that total belief in what she was doing, coupled with my anxieties for the village brushed aside any lingering doubts I might have had ab
out this business. I told her about the police.

  She smiled. “They know me. I’m a crank. Harmless. They won’t bother about what I get up to. They’ll be glad of me when this is over.”

  “You can rid Rooksands of this…intrusion?”

  “I’ve been expecting something. It’ll be tough. But if we don’t make a stand, it’ll get far worse.”

  Back at the village, I showed her around and introduced her to some of my friends. Her presence made them uneasy and I got the impression Kelvin thought she was a bit maze, but they were committed. The death of the vicar had shaken everyone up. Ironically, when she drove off, there was a strange vacuum, as if we’d become a little more vulnerable.

  She’d given several of us some strict instructions about preparing the village, protecting it. There were certain charms and spells we could use. So we cut branches from elder, hawthorn and rowan among others and gave them sharp points, digging them into the ground so their tips faced the sea. Morgana had also given us a notepad in which she’d scribbled sigils and weird doodles.

  “Carve them into your doors,” she said. “Take the bigger pebbles from the beach and create the signs at its edge.” She also gave me a number of small wooden figurines that looked like variants on the piskies of Cornish legend. “Hang these in the trees.” My companions surprised me by their sudden faith, and got on with the job industriously, almost like children, absorbed by their activities. No laughter now, this was deadly serious.

  By evening we’d made a thorough job of setting out the first wave of protection. A few of the villagers, particularly the ones who’d come here most recently, wondered what the hell we were doing, but we said it was part of the early planning for the Halloween festival, coming up soon. Most of them took it in good spirits and asked if there was anything they could do. No one mentioned the shadow lying over the village.