Disciples of the Serpent: A Novel of the O.C.L.T.

by Williams, Sidney

  The corner of her mouth curled up just slightly, and that flicker along with the deep mania he detected somewhere behind her eyes chilled him. She’d sensed the hunger in the something just as he had. She had not been chilled, but elated.

  “Who are those men you’re working with, Kaity? What do they want? Why are they helping?”

  “Just like with us. It’s an experiment. They want to see a place that can start fresh.”

  “It won’t be starting fresh. It’ll be a waking nightmare.”

  Her teeth clenched.

  “It’ll be an illumination. Get out of there, Keon. Get ready to look into a new and golden dawn.”

  The Hummer’s rear gate had been folded up, and a tarp extended from the back door, tied into place on two aluminum poles staked into the ground.

  A young man lugged the black case around to a table set up there as Kaity trailed him with Nelda at one shoulder and Alison at the other. Keon followed behind them with the stoic men flanking him. They’d keep him in line. Kaity hoped his eyes would open and he’d join in soon.

  “Careful with it,” she said, knowing the man would take care but feeling compelled to give some kind of instruction.

  He only grunted as he placed the case and stood aside for her. She stepped in and flipped the catches on the case’s front then folded back the lid.

  “Les, it’s ready for your magic,” she said.

  Leslie Innes, a kid of about twenty-one, kept his head slightly bowed as he moved in to the device. He had long, dark hair that hung in oily strings around a long face mitigated slightly by the dark horn-rimmed glasses he wore.

  He stepped over to the black plastic case without speaking and flipped up the lid. That revealed a metal framework within that stretched up vertically around a smooth flat panel housed inside the case’s bottom. From foam pockets within the case, he slipped out small components and began fitting them into place on vertical side bars.

  From a duffle stuffed into the back of the hummer beside the case, he slipped out a battery pack and several black cartridges.

  “The last symbol you gave me is the last you need?” he asked, chin pointed in to his throat so far he was almost directing his voice down his collar.

  “That’s it.”

  “We’re going to produce interlocking pieces,” he said. “It’s a multi-piece assembly for the obelisk. Then we’ll switch over for your smaller staffs. Several small pieces interlocking for those also. We have enough filament cartridges to give you a large quantity.”

  “Time frame?”

  “It’ll go quick enough since we’re keeping them small.”

  “Let’s get started.”

  “We and the Coast Guard have choppers in the air again with eyes open,” Rees said. “Nothing so far. IRCG is coordinating with the Naval Service too. We’ll get an OPV in the vicinity soon. The LÉ Clíodhna was headed home toward Haulbowline, but it’s being re-routed. It’s still equipped from an operation in the Mediterranean.”

  O’Donnell only gave one tick of her head in acknowledgement. An offshore patrol vessel might be handy, and it would be good to have another set of observers at work along with the firepower it offered. Cannons might come in handy against a repeat of the thing from the bay. She had to keep in mind soon with a sailing vessel was a qualified term.

  She kept her eyes focused on the distant shore beyond Small Skellig, almost lost in gray mist, and the swirl of gray nothing forced her to ask herself again what she’d seen. She had to wonder if in the fury of the moment she’d projected something, imagined the great and profane thing in the bay. Maybe all of this was still a bad dream? She kept wanting that but knew she couldn’t rest on a bromide. No matter how much she doubted in retrospect what had seemed certain in the moment, deep down she knew the threat was real. Even if anything they could do was futile, they had to keep alert.

  “Lot of spots for them to try from,” she said, forcing herself to focus on the ridges and rises outlined in the mist.

  She continued along a rugged path they’d followed on the island’s edge for a while, Rees and Bullfinch behind. Small stone huts dappled the shoreline, still firm and intact and looking like huddled sentinels facing the ocean.

  Rees noticed where she was staring. “It’s said monks came here to allow the solitude to help them get closer to God.”

  “Maybe they were also serving as lookouts,” Bullfinch said.

  Forty

  Keon watched the shaft on the 3-D printer bed take shape as the extruder zipped in a pattern of repetition. Long strokes alternated with concentrated shimmers. In the longer moves, it kept making a turn at one end that left a small open loop while layers of dark filament built on layers and nothing became something.

  Earlier, three small blocks had been finished for the obelisk with intricate markings and etches along its edges, duplicating the lost alphabet symbols. Someone had carried that off to sink it in the sand on the beach.

  These new items seemed to be the tops of staffs.

  “How many members do you have?” he asked.

  Kaity smiled. “Don’t worry. There’ll be enough.”

  “The dream…”

  “Yes, you felt it.” Her eyes flared with excitement, cutting him off, and chilling him because he saw madness and detachment becoming more pronounced.

  “Is that what you’re counting on? Dreams to…”

  He looked at the small group of people who’d gathered and were busy at various tasks around them while the printer worked.

  “The dream is the call, Keon. We have a contingent, but it will summon more.”

  “I only dreamed because my thoughts were concentrated on all this again. It was a game, Kaity. We were a bunch of nerds who wanted to get the old guard excited over our ideas and tricks so we could snicker about it.”

  “But we were right, weren’t we? You should have seen what was out there in the bay. It was just like the hints in Rottman’s stories. He worked from research and secret meetings and from dreams, and he knew what was there, waiting, sleeping. He got closer than anyone and recorded the glimpses he caught in his nightmares.”

  “Was there really something out there? In the water?”

  She laughed. “You made it all possible, and you want it to be wrong. It was huge, incredible, everything you could have expected, and if the dreams are touching you, that means the twins are there and others will come.”

  “Wait a minute, what? Twins?”

  “Think about it. The one in Clew Bay was the mother. The ones dispersed here were the children, and there were rumors of the two, a pattern foretold in the Greek myths, too. The Rod of Asclepius showed one serpent wrapped around a staff. It’s the symbol of medicine here in Ireland. Hermes carried the staff with twin serpents, the caduceus, but there were twins on the staffs that hailed Ningishzida, the Sumerian god as well. Those were rumblings from one land, and they were part of the reality here as well. Crom is Ning. Ning is Crom.”

  It was almost a song. He stared into her eyes again, into the lost country there, a place of delusion. If she was not wrong about the legends, it was clear she didn’t fully appreciate what could happen.

  “They will bring healing when they destroy and blaze the way for the new, and if they are guardians of the gates they’ll be followed.”

  “If there was really something in the bay, if there’s something out there under the waves, we need to study it. It’s incredible if what we were playing is real and if we managed to really fill in the gaps with the symbols and my algorithm, but the study needs to be conducted under controlled circumstances, not in the midst of chaos. Dear God, Kaity. Think!”

  “It’s a dimensional door. Nothing can be studied without opening it.”

  “What then? The land overrun? Destruction?”

  “The Americans want to create a great laboratory for their theories, a new economic model, a new political reality, rid of president and taoiseach. Maybe they’ll get what they want. Certainly we’ll have the c
hance to rein in whatever world is created. The dreams you’re feeling, I’ve been feeling them, too. We’re talking about a new level of consciousness. An opening of the mind’s third eye. The ajna. We’ll be on the cusp of it all. You can join me.”

  “Kaity, if so many ancient people feared and sought to seal the passage, what can that mean? Turn the printer off. If people come to join you, turn them away and let’s stop this.”

  She shook her head. “The Druids knew ‘about the powers and authority of the immortal gods.’ It’s all been suppressed, but they were overrun and outvoted by Patrick and his disciples and the little order that betrayed other Druids. It’s time to turn things around, reverse and rediscover.”

  “There were some suggestions they worked with Patrick because they saw what was about to befall this land. They decided a different age needed to be instituted.”

  “The time has come. The time for a new birth of healing. Think of the turmoil in the world. It just perpetuates. It just keeps cycling over and over. Unrest, pain, poverty. The institutions and politicians fail us. The twins can be set free and what will follow will destroy all that’s not worked and a cycle of healing will follow the turmoil.”

  The printer head completed its motion. Resting on the printer bed now was a shiny, firm loop, looking like a shepherd’s hook though closed at one end, and a conclave notch had formed at the other end. Embedded just below the loop, he could make out lines of one of the lost characters. In a few seconds the loop was added to other pieces, assembling a staff two meters long.

  Kaity lifted it and tested it to see if it was dry enough to hold. Satisfied that it was, she lifted it with one hand and dragged it about in the air. As wind moved through the opening, which Keon decided really looked like the loop at the top of an ankh, a whistling sound issued from it.

  “A musical note?”

  “Ogham symbols were always sounds. The lost symbols are too. We’ve had a small group working secretly among the students at Trinity,” Kaity said. “Interpreting the symbols mathematically and planning, re-inventing what you did. Wind whistling through the loops will create an arrangement that channels energy.”

  “That’s what Rottman was hinting about in ‘The Provocation from Below,’ what he called ‘The Song of the Air’?”

  “The way people have tried to bury the story suggests it may be more powerful than channeling the energy of the Ley lines.”

  As she continued to sweep the piece in the air, the long-haired man returned to the printer, made adjustments to calibration and then flipped a switch to set it to work again.

  “Portable prototype?” Keon asked. “That printer?”

  “Latest thing from CRANN apparently. Some of the interchangeable pieces we pre-made, but Leslie here’s prepped the loops with the values of the symbols. If it holds up, we’ll have an array that duplicates what was probably accomplished with iron horns once upon a time.”

  “How many do you have? Here?”

  “Enough, but others will come.”

  “You’re going to wait for dreamers to hold them up for the wind and wake the caduceus pieces?”

  “Don’t sound so hopeful that it will fail. We have some players that may help regardless of the dreamers.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t see him but Freya and the order had found some people who were also referred to in Rottman’s texts and the old writings.”

  Keon had not noticed a small cluster of figures huddled together at the perimeter near the Hummer.

  “The one that grabbed me at the priory. That was a tentacle? I thought…”

  “You dreamed it? No, he wasn’t one of a kind. They’ll be serving as guardians of our effort, or they can hold up staffs as well, but the dreams will bring people. Wait and see.”

  Forty-One

  A message popped up on Bullfinch’s tablet which he shielded with his body, keeping a forearm wrapped around it. Text was probably the best he could hope for out here. Mack had explained to him once how typed words might travel even if signals weren’t strong enough for other data.

  “Found it,” read the little bubble under the name Rebecca.

  “Rottman story?” he typed.

  “Yes. Chicago Public. Rottman writes of cult channeling the ‘The Song of the Wind.’”

  “That’s different than what we saw before,” Bullfinch said under his breath.

  “What’s it mean?” he typed, glad his numb fingers managed without mistake.

  “A chant in the story,” Rebecca responded. “Not sure beyond that, but it’s not the ritual of oak and mistletoe that we know of the Druids. I’m going to get a scan out to Mack to see if it helps with his research.”

  Bullfinch strolled up a jagged set of steps then over a rugged patch to a vantage where O’Donnell stood, squinting toward distant land through a pair of high-powered binoculars.

  “The chants and the wind seem to be about different approaches to channeling energy through the elements. In this story it’s the wind. Supposedly Rottman’s acolytes were scared of it when they collected his known stories.”

  “I’m back to thinking it’s all hopeless, Professor,” O’Donnell said. “We launch an incredible effort; they regroup down here. Possibly. We’re not even sure, and we don’t know how many they are or what they’ll try or even what’s below us. If it’s as bad as before and you can’t spot an angle, what’ll it take to stop it? That ship that’s coming’s got antiaircraft guns, big cannons but not really equipped for a sea serpent the size of New Jersey. Maybe we need to call in a British sub with nukes and end it all.”

  “That’s the fatalism creeping back in,” Bullfinch said. “With a sprinkling of pessimism. You can never afford to give yourself over to despair, dear lady. Not in this line of work. The times since I’ve been with O.C.L.T. that I’ve thought all was lost couldn’t be counted on Kali’s fingers.”

  “Fan of Pollyanna are you, Professor? I’ll go with my own gut.”

  “Suit yourself and keep your eyes open,” Bullfinch said, and turned to stare toward the ocean, looking for signs of stirring other than the waves.

  He didn’t want to give up, and he didn’t want to fuel O’Donnell’s despair, but he didn’t feel like Pollyanna. What had the story’s optimistic lead said? Find something in everything to be glad about? As the bitter chill and the wind’s ragged edge sprinkled with icy sea moisture bit into him, a notion arose.

  What if they waited here and nothing happened? What if his educated guess was wrong? What if the cult sprang up somewhere else to perpetrate its dark ritual?

  Or what if this was the time he didn’t figure things out? What if Rebecca and Crease or Mack couldn’t channel something to him that would save the day this time? Maybe this was the day he’d go down fighting. At least he’d do it with one of the bravest women he’d ever known at his side. He put a hand on her shoulder, accepting the solace of that thought for the moment at least. She’d lifted the binoculars again, determined to keep looking, even if she had only a field of gray flannel spread before her.

  He sought something else to say, but Rees trotted up to their side, alleviating the need. It would only have been a platitude anyway.

  “Choppers are seeing movement of people along one side of the peninsula,” he said.

  “What kind of movement?”

  “It’s like a march they’re saying. All along the Iveragh. Looks like they’re headed toward the sea.” He listened for a moment. “Eastern side.”

  “Lemmings?” O’Donnell asked.

  “Doesn’t sound right,” Bullfinch said.

  “Maybe they’re luring people somehow, food for the thing we’re looking for,” O’Donnell said.

  “Everywhere around here’s sacred somehow,” Rees said. “Maybe it’s an annual pilgrimage we’ve just forgotten. They think they’re seeing farmers and tourists and everything.”

  “It’s on the Ring of Kerry, isn’t it?” O’Donnell said. “Tons of guests traveling that route.”<
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  “I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Bullfinch said. “They’re congregating. They’ve heard some kind of call.”

  “A trumpet?”

  “Rottman wrote of things that came to men in dreams. If something’s imminent, perhaps anything that’s waiting below the water has reached out telepathically.”

  Rees put one finger in his left ear to block the sound of the wind and waves and listened again to the earpiece.

  “There’s something going on near the end of the peninsula,” Rees said, listening then relaying. “A bit of an encampment near Ballinskelligs Castle.”

  “Can we see that from here?” Bullfinch asked.

  “Don’t think so,” O’Donnell said. “It’ll be up the east side of the peninsula. It overlooks its own bay. Not that different from our other site.”

  “Let’s head to other side of the island,” Bullfinch said. “See what we can catch a glimpse of.”

  O’Donnell set off along the craggy ledge, placing each foot carefully. From the way she positioned herself, Bullfinch suspected she was prepared to reach back and offer him support if she thought he was slipping. Thoughtful, but he placed his steps with care as well. They didn’t have time for foolish mishaps.

  “They don’t allow climbing out here this time of year, usually,” O’Donnell said. “I can see why. It’s treacherous.”

  “There’s a lot of haze out there, too,” Bullfinch said. “Can I see those binoculars?”

  They travelled a bit farther and she handed them over. Bullfinch squinted into the lenses. After a bit of shifting them about, he got them comfortable, then scanned until he spotted the outline of shore.

  “You really think there’s something in this bay?”

  “I don’t know. Could be there’s something in the water between here and that shore. There’s a lot of shoreline. Can we get a look from a chopper?”

  “Let’s head back,” Rees said. “Jimmy ought to be able to take us up. It’s not nearly as bad as it was at The Reek.”

  “Not yet,” Bullfinch said.