Time of the Beast (23 page)

I turned away from him while his frenetic wails rose up over the shadowy wetlands, and my brain grew inert with the sense of disbelief as I looked out over the marshes and the dusk deepened. It seemed to me then that there came strange sounds from beyond: distant murmurings and stirrings from the swaying reeds and shifting mud, echoing the fearful things which rose inside my mind. Then I froze, as far out in the greying haze I saw sudden movement, a distant glimmer of dull light that shone for a moment and then was gone. But in a few moments I saw it again: the eerie glow of an unnatural brightness that drifted wisp-like into the mist, then flared up like a lantern in the seething vapours above the bogs in what was like the swirling motions of a wild spectral dance. And gradually I felt sure it was approaching us, while I gazed upon it motionless and enthralled.

Desperately I now sought to take control of myself and turned to flee back to the smoking remains of the huts. I looked down at Aelfric, who lay sprawled and unmoving on the ground where I had left him, and I knew with despair that I must find some way to return him and Cadroc to their senses. In panic I turned towards Cynewulf, who still stood gazing deep into the crimson glow of the ruined structures, his sword drawn and clutched tightly to his breast like a symbol of religious consolation. All my doubts and fears concerning Cynewulf’s state of mind returned in a moment as I remembered him as the raging unbalanced creature who had attacked me in the fog. I feared again the possibility that the dark spirit he pursued lay truly within him – that hidden inside the man there might dwell a monster. I now felt a deep certainty that he had brought some black spell or curse upon our company. But I also knew that Cynewulf was my last and only hope.

As I approached him, he did not turn to look at me, but I saw his eyes glow bright red as he fixed them into the dying firelight. Then he spoke in a tone that was flat and strange, and I knew at once that some awful change had crept upon him.

‘Cadroc has failed!’ he said with a hollow, desolate laugh. ‘Listen to him raving into the night. He has lost and his magic has failed. It is over.’

There was something so remote and disturbing in his manner, as he stood there stiff and glassy-eyed, that it seemed he was no longer like himself. But how could I know this truly when I understood so little of the man, yet feared so much?

‘Did you see the omen of the crows?’ he said, his voice a cold whisper. ‘Little black harbingers of death. They speak to me. The gods speak to me. They tell me he is coming – coming with the darkness – and retribution will be his. His will be the final victory. He will tear out and devour my soul. He will claim it at last for his own!’

At once his strength appeared to crumble as his legs gave way, and he slumped down onto the earth while his great body began to quake and shudder as he gasped for breath, and I looked in horrified incredulity at the sight of this grizzled giant who seemed in a moment to become like a terrified child. Then I knew that as Aelfric had succumbed to his memories, and Cadroc to his doubts, so Cynewulf now fell prey to his own deepest fear – his dread of things supernatural. But there was something terrible about him that chilled my blood, as his eyes bulged and his teeth chattered – a sense that what came over him was something more than simply fear.

I shook my head hopelessly, for I saw that he too was lost to me, and I understood the shocking truth that all my companions had fallen deep into their own gulfs of terror, which gaped beneath them as the darkness fell. And now I stood alone – alone upon the brink of my soul’s own darkness as I faced the approaching night. I moved away reaching inside my robe and drawing out my cross, but it seemed now to bring me little comfort. Then I felt my senses sharpen as I trained them into the crepuscular shadows ahead, while tremors of sheer dread began to fill my heart. For I became aware with sudden certainty that something moved out there beyond the scope of my sight, a thing of infinite stealth that crept slowly but inexorably towards me. With a trembling hand I raised up my cross and sought desperately in my mind for commands to hold back the thing that approached, but the words merely faltered and died on my lips as my breath rose in harsh groans, and my breast throbbed agonisingly, while the pulse in my temples pounded a frantic rhythm into my brain as I felt the last of my faith and strength seep away to desert me. Helplessly I watched as a tall shape cloaked in darkness began to take form before me, and I could not move or cry out but only stand powerless as the dreadful visitant advanced into the glow of the distant firelight. I did not know if what I felt most was terror or relief as I stared into the face of the shaman Taeppa.

The shaman stamped his staff down onto the earth, then looked from under his raven-feathered hat at my outstretched cross, and said:

‘When the evil comes – and I sense that it will – you must find a stronger defence than
that
!’ He turned his head slightly, towards the sound of Cadroc’s frenzied ranting, and remarked: ‘Is this your Christian miracle of resurrection? You make enough noise to raise the dead?’ I remained speechless as he looked back at me. ‘I have been with you on your journey from Meretun. I knew I would not be welcome among your company. But I was aware that the time might come when I should be needed.’

I gaped at him in confusion, fearful of him from our previous encounter, yet also comforted by the mere fact of another human presence. At once I gave a cry, my nerves close to breaking as I gestured out into the blackness of the fen, where I saw once more a sudden flaring of that macabre glowing light. The shaman looked towards it and nodded.

‘Phantoms of the marsh,’ he said, as my eyes followed the uncanny sight. ‘They walk deep in the swamps where it is not safe for mortals to go. Do not let your look be drawn to them. They will cast an enchantment on a man and lead him to certain death.’

I tore my eyes away. It seemed there was no end to the horrors in this place.

Now the shaman moved past me, looking down at the stricken figures of Cynewulf and Aelfric.

‘Our situation is fearful,’ I began to babble. ‘The inhabitants of this island are all murdered, and a terrible madness has fallen upon my companions…’

‘Fear has overcome them,’ the shaman said grimly, ‘because they do not know the true nature of the thing they must confront. Only that, whether man or spirit, our enemy is indeed a monster who weaves a web of fear to entangle us, to make us weak and divided, each trapped alone within his soul’s worst terror. We must learn what it is we face and whether to fight it foremost with spear or spell. To know this will restore and unite us. It will focus and strengthen us against the great dread of what is unknown.’ He looked at me closely with his piercing gaze. ‘There is only one way to achieve this. We must do now what was left unfinished at Meretun.’ I stared at him as my heart began to tremble. ‘I must cast a memory spell, and you must journey within yourself to uncover the truth that is hidden there. The darkness must be drawn forth. To look into the past is our way to see into the future.’

‘I cannot do this!’ I told him. ‘With my friends incapable, I must stay alert to watch over them…’

‘To what avail?’ he said. ‘So you may see sooner when death approaches?’

Fear and suspicion began to crackle in my brain. How might I trust the word of a pagan wizard? I recalled too well his sinister powers of entrancement. It might even be that he was himself an agent of the Devil, who would perform some blasphemous ritual or spell to summon the monster for his own wicked purpose. Every manner of wild and fantastic imagining came flooding into my head. But what choice did I have? I saw finally that his words were irresistible – that the key to this matter lay somewhere inside my mind, and finally I must turn to face it, to try to break this strange malediction which had fallen upon us. For the sake of us all I must place my faith in this man. Now he approached me, flinging off his hat and throwing down the leather bag which hung from a strap over his shoulder, then drawing up his knife as he had done back in Meretun, moving it to and fro in gentle swaying motions as he brought it before my eyes.

‘Let that which is lost be found!’ he pronounced. ‘What you see in the spirit lands will be terrifying. But do not let your courage fail! ’

In the distant light of our bonfire, I gazed upon the faintly glowing blade as the shaman leaned close to me, his body moving rhythmically from side to side as a faint humming sound began to rise in his throat until it welled into a highpitched drone that filled his head. Again he drew his blade so near to my face that my sight was a blur, and my eyes closed as his voice rose in a sonorous tone which seemed to drown out the far-off ravings of Cadroc. It felt to me then as if I embarked upon some awful passage of initiation.

‘Return now in your mind to the spirit-shrine where we met, see it clearly in every detail, and remember those things that passed there between us. Recall the feelings you knew in those moments.’ The image grew vividly in my brain, as I knew a momentary reawakening of the alarm and then the strange irreconcilable emotions I had experienced. Then softly he continued: ‘Now your mind will expand to embrace all that is within and what lies beyond. Deeper inward and farther outward you must go to gain entry to the spirit world and pass through the gateway into memory. Time does not exist here, but all you have ever known is within the unceasing moment of the present. Move onward now from the spirit-shrine and into the memories beyond. Release your mind to give them form and substance anew, to find what you must seek with the clear and eternal vision of the soul.
Remember!
’

It seemed at first that some part of me attempted to resist him, as I felt I could not endure the sheer terror of this experience, but beyond this I knew that I simply must not fail. Then astonishingly it began to feel that something in my mind was growing strangely drowsy and calm, floating free from all my present fears, as if I drifted away like a shade into the night to approach the borders of another realm. And as these feelings grew, at last it came, like a trapped bubble rising from out of the murky depths and upward into the light: the belief that I stood once more in the nighted marshes at the outlaw’s camp, bathed in the glow of their fire, while their dark and sinister shapes gathered about me. Yet now I seemed to observe all this from a place of remoteness, almost as if it were happening to someone else. Then I heard the voices of my tormentors, coarse and grating, but rising in shouts I was now clearly able to understand.

‘What’s he doing here? A fucking monk!’

‘Looks like he’s been on the beer.’

‘Drunk bastard!’

They hurled me to the ground and yelled insults at me, but I knew well these were all dead men – mere ghosts in my mind – and I almost disregarded them.

‘ ‘Ere, my lovely, ‘ave something you’ve never ‘ad before,’ I heard the woman call as she grabbed at me and squatted over me. Then I crawled away while I felt a hot wetness splash onto my back. Yet throughout all this I could only marvel upon these vivid images and sensations which the shaman’s remarkable powers were restoring to my memory. Now my heart shook as I recalled the deep and certain terror of my own damnation, while I saw it come: the giant shadow-thing, rising once more out of the mist as it crept into the glimmering light. And there at last I looked clearly at the form of the Fenland monster as it took shape out of the night.

It remained a thing of distortion and darkness: a towering spectral figure whose bulk seemed equally huge, its movements suggesting extreme deformity and prodigious power – and yet it possessed no apparent physical body at all, but appeared only as a mass of swirling blackness that drifted noiselessly and almost invisibly in the dark. But as it came and I gazed up into its shadowy face, I had the clear impression of hideous features twisted with insane malevolence, and then saw plainly the gleam of its eyes vividly reflected by the firelight. Now in my memory I felt myself struggle to my feet and lurch away into the dark – but this time it was into the darkness of my mind that I fled, as my nerve failed and panic gripped me, and I sought only to escape the final sight of the horror taking shape before me. But even as I turned from it, I was seized about the shoulders by what felt like fingers of iron, and I was wrenched about to look into the face of the shaman, which loomed into my view and rendered me helpless with a cold dread.

‘What do you see?’ his voice demanded in an icy and implacable tone. But all I saw was his face, entranced and streaked with sweat, twisted and strange. Yet most frightful of all were his eyes, or rather his lack of them, for what I witnessed there were only empty gaping sockets, twin chasms of pure blackness that seemed to blaze out at me from within the dark depths of his heathen soul. My awareness froze as I feared then that my worst doubts were true – that he had invaded my mind with some secret and sinister purpose, and now he held me spellbound and trapped like a fly in the spider’s snare. ‘You must tell me what you see!’ his awful voice boomed and echoed inside my head. ‘For I am blind in your inner world. But I may grant the gift of sight. Look deep at what is within and find strength to confront it.
Tell me what you see!’

Now his face was fading from my view, and I felt myself thrown powerfully backwards, returned into the memory of the firelight where that massive shadow-shrouded figure towered over me. Then I felt the blood congeal in my veins, and my whole being shuddered as for a fleeting instant the vision of its face grew clear.

It was truly a monster, demonic and utterly inhuman, yet also obscenely man-like and made infinitely more hateful by the hideous mockery of its resemblance. I could never have imagined anything more bestial or horrible – so vile and uncanny in its sheer ugliness. The whole brutish countenance was covered in a sordid mass of dark straggling hair and beard, and was distorted in shape, its brows swollen by unsightly crags and bulges above the savage sunken glare of its eyes –
eyes of the darkest blue.
For as I stared at this misshapen abomination, it seemed I recognised somewhere within it a remote, debased and filthy likeness to Cynewulf himself.