Andrew Hawks

by John Booth

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. Not right now. Maybe after my birthday I’ll write to her. I need time to think.” Kylie shrugged and swapped her plate with mine, as hers was now empty and mine was untouched except for the conspicuous lack of sausages.

  “You’re going to get fat,” I said pointedly.

  “Will you no longer jerk off to me in your fantasies if I get fat and ugly?” she said a shade too loudly. I looked around us to see if anyone had noticed, but it appeared that nobody heard her.

  “Kylie…”

  “Is this too bloated for you?”

  She lifted her blouse to reveal a perfectly shaped tummy. I started to go red in the face and she took pity on me and stopped her attack with a few words of warning. “Don’t criticize my eating habits, Andrew Hawks, or I shall say and do all that again, but standing on top of a table next time.”

  “I surrender,” I said, in as low a voice as I could and still be heard.

  I tried a change of subject, “Mum was questioning me about the spell book yesterday. It seems Peter was caught going home and told his mother he gave it to us.”

  “That little rat, what a time for him to develop a streak of honesty.” Kylie looked highly annoyed at the news.

  “It’s all right, nobody believed him. But what’s in the book?”

  Kylie looked at her watch, which made me look at mine. We had five minutes to get to the next class. “I’ll tell you after class. I’ve brought it with me. It’s in my rucksack.”

  We had no more opportunities to talk about it until we got off the bus later that afternoon. I was burning with curiosity, but the last thing we needed were witnesses, so I couldn’t risk looking at it while we were on the bus.

  The skies were clear by the time we got to Felorton and we found a comfortable place to sit on the churchyard wall. One warmed by sunlight. There was nobody about and we could finally talk in private. Kylie handed me the book, but couldn’t stop herself from pointing out the interesting bits as soon as it was in my hands.

  “Look at the front, read what it says,” she demanded before I even managed to get the thing open. The book was bound in expensive leather, though there was no title or author’s name on it. It was physically large at nine inches tall by seven inches wide and about an inch and a half thick. The paper inside was thicker than a normal book and I think it may have been parchment. It felt soft, almost like the leather cover.

  The pages were hand written, but in single letters and not cursive script. In the front was a dedication of sorts. It said:

  ‘This is the Protection Book of Fell. Every hundred years it has been re-written into the script of the time by the pre-eminent sister and this time that task falls upon me, Kathy Hawks, to perform this ritual. Below are the names of all the sisters before me who have carried out this sacred task.’

  There was a list of names running all the way down the page.

  “There are twenty-eight names in that list,” Kylie pointed out saving me the trouble of counting them, “The ones at the bottom aren’t in English, they’re some kind of runes. I looked them up on the internet. Turn to page four and read the prophesy.”

  “Who’s reading this book, me or you?” I said, feeling more than a little annoyed, but I turned to page four as instructed. Each page was numbered with Roman numerals. This is what I read.

  ‘The three were banished, the dog demon king, his incestuous queen and, her son who alone did not fully deserve his punishment. It is our duty to guard the place where they are banished until they are freed by cursed imps. A hero shall assume the mantle of the Lord of the Snakes. By the snakes writhing on his arms shall you know him. Untouched by woman, he shall banish the King. Bring justice to the Queen and possible redemption for the Prince.

  They are the children of the children of the children of Don. The Goddess of the moon will guide him in this task as she assists all those who are worthy.’

  “What a load of bollocks,” I said when I got to the end.

  Kylie was not so dismissive.

  “That’s you, that is, ‘untouched by woman’. I’ll have to keep you pure so you can save the world. Only jerking off for you, my lad, I’m afraid.” Kylie had to stop at that point as I started to tickle her. Five minutes later, I let her catch her breath.

  “No more of that sort of talk.” I admonished. “This prophesy is completely screwed as it is. Those three are stuck halfway out of their prison. You put on one of the snake armlets as well as me and I don’t think you qualify as a virgin. So there’s no use in worrying about what I might do with you, is there?”

  Kylie sobered up.

  “You are certainly right, Andrew. I was only kidding anyway. But if you turn to page twenty, you’ll find the details of the ceremony the ‘usual suspects’ performed. They failed to mention quite a few of the details.”

  I turned to page twenty and read the spell carefully. The passage was entitled ‘Freeing the Banished from the Oak’ with an accurate drawing of the Banishment Oak. Mrs. Kelly must have gone to the tree and drawn it from life. The instruction said, in big letters, ‘Never to be performed’. That would have been a red rag to a bull as far as the usual suspects were concerned. There was a drawing of the three who had been banished, a black dog, the woman and the young man.

  As Kylie said, the usual suspects had lied to us, though mainly by omission. The pentagram was made in the way the usual suspects had said, cut with a stolen knife. Then the ritual called for the two girls to strip naked. The cat had to be strangled by a naked man just before he joined with them. That is, each witch taking part had to have sexual congress with that man in the hour before midnight of the full moon.

  There were some further instructions that I’m going to leave to your imaginations, because I’m not going to write them down. This spell was disgusting and I had difficulty believing Jane and Sally would have attempted it.

  The candles of the pentagram had to be lit in a certain order. The witches who were charged with sacred power by taking part in congress had to spill their blood into the flames of the candles from a cut on the first finger of their left hands. Each witch had to cut their own finger with the stolen knife. The book emphasized that the blood of each witch must be freely given to break the bonds.

  Then they had to chant a long and complicated magical spell, which was written out in syllables presumably to avoid anyone performing the spell from making a mistake.

  The book had a passage, repeating that this ritual must never be performed and the only reason it was written down was so the coven would recognize it if they saw it. This sounded more than a bit dubious to me, because in the next line it stated the witches and the man who carried out the ceremony would be empowered with great magical gifts for their efforts, though it failed to mention exactly what those gifts might be.

  “The power to withstand great pain in the buttocks would have proved useful,” I remarked to Kylie, who thumped me in a friendly manner.

  “Does this spell read like bait to you?” Kylie asked.

  I nodded. Though the idea of a conspiracy going back at least twenty-nine centuries seemed a little unlikely. “It would be for the usual suspects. Though would Sally and Jane really do that stuff to each other?”

  “Who knows? Some girls do that together.” Kylie looked at her watch. “Would your mother put up with a visitor for your evening meal?”

  “She always welcomes visitors, especially you.”

  “Then let’s go to my house and hide the book and then it’s off to your place for some decent food.”

  “You have a one track mind, Kylie”

  “Not as much as boys your age,” she remarked, once again placing her hand on a sensitive part of my anatomy with inevitable results, “You’re up, I see,” she observed, picking up her rucksack and running off down the lane.

  I sighed, and began walking after her. It was good to have her back.

  15. Vengeance of the Gods

  I was
standing in a valley in the middle of the night. The only light came from the full moon, which was high in the sky, and from the stars. I have never seen stars so bright or as clear as they were at that moment. The Milky Way looked like a great white silk scarf draped across the sky.

  I was at the head of a gathering of people. As I turned I could see a great throng assembled behind me, though none of them stepped an inch further forward than where I stood. They wore white robes with deep hoods that hid their faces. I couldn’t even tell if they were men or women.

  There was something glittering in front of us. It was twenty feet wide, a curving ribbon splitting the valley in two. Whatever it was, it separated the assembled throng from a curving raised dais on the other side of it. This was no crude scaffolding type structure. The front of the dais was intricately carved, but it was too dark to see exactly what the shapes carved on it might be. Odd edges of the carving glistened with moonlight

  On the dais were four thrones, though thrones might be overstating it a little. The largest and most impressive was directly in front of me and was empty. To the right of it were the other chairs. One of them was cut from stone and on it sat a man. He was wearing a simple silver torq about his forehead holding back his hair. He had his eyes closed, resting or contemplating. He was certainly not sleeping .

  Right of him stood a smaller throne, padded and covered in dark cloth. It was difficult to distinguish color in the moonlight and it just looked dark. It might have been purple or red.

  On it sat a woman who stared impassively at the crowd. To her right was a much simpler throne, more like an elaborate wooden chair. It was occupied by a man who might have been my age. In the light from the moon, it wasn’t possible to tell what any of them might look like in detail, though I thought the young man looked weary.

  Something was happening. At first, I wasn’t sure what and then I noticed a dimming of the sky and looked up. A gigantic half-moon of a canopy drifted across the sky to cover us. Like a parachute, it unfurled until the entire crowd was underneath it. It was in the shape of a new moon, curved like the dais and gossamer thin. I could see the stars shining through it. It hung silently at least a hundred feet above us and what was holding it up I couldn’t imagine, because there was not a breath of wind.

  There was a gasp of awe from the crowd. When I returned my gaze to the dais, a beautiful naked woman had appeared on the biggest throne. She waved her hand and the dais became lit in soft white light. I was close enough to see that the woman was the one I had first seen in the woods.

  In the suffused light, I could see the three other people were dressed in dark purple robes and I immediately recognized the woman and the young man as the people I’d been shown inside the tree. The other man looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. There was no sign of the hound from hell.

  The naked woman stood and walked to the edge of the dais. I could see a silver band about her neck and a silver ring on her left hand. She didn’t look at the assembled people in a friendly manner. In fact, she looked angry and stared contemptuously at us.

  She spoke: I would like to tell you what her voice sounded like, but it is beyond my power of description. If you think of the sound of church bells, muffled and ringing far away you might get a glimmer of how melodious her voice was.

  “Children of the Earth, I come to you tonight on behalf of the Gods. Over the years, we have granted you power to aid you in your path to self-knowledge. But you have repaid our generosity with greed and a wanton abuse of the gifts we bestowed.”

  “Your leaders have been the guiltiest. Lord Dar, you sit upon your throne, resplendent in your royal garb. Dare you show your arms to your people, so that they might see the snakes residing upon them? The creature that most symbolizes hidden mystic knowledge has been enslaved to act to your whim. Is this how you repay our generosity?”

  Lord Dar stood and approached the Goddess with a look upon his face that might have been distain. A yard from her, he stopped and raised his hands; shook the sleeves of his robe so that both his arms were revealed. Living snakes the color of the moon were wrapped around them. They turned their heads and hissed at the Goddess.

  “The Gods are weak and stupid,” he said. “We have taken the powers you gave us and we have used them to tame our enemies and bring peace unto this world.”

  She shook her head sadly at his words. I could feel her sorrow as though it was my own.

  “The way a lion is tamed by a cage. You bring the peace of the graveyard,” she replied. “The Gods teach respect for all and the way of harmony with nature, not the ways of destruction and death.”

  Lord Dar laughed loudly and went back to his granite throne. I was suddenly sure this was the man whose corpse I saw briefly, sitting on the stone throne inside the room in the hill.

  The Goddess turned to the woman who was certainly his wife and Queen.

  “And you, Lady Suttor? Married to this man, yet cuckolding him with your brother. What kind of Queen sets such an example of perfidy and disloyalty to her people?”

  The woman on the throne rose and faced the Goddess without any sign of fear. “My brother has been pleasuring me since I was but a child without breasts. Why should I give that up for a mere alliance of marriage? I am not of the common people. Their laws and yours do not apply to me.”

  The Goddess turned to address the young man.

  “And you, Lord Bron? It cannot be said this guilt of your parents applies to you. Do you choose to stand with your Goddess or with these accidents of your birth?”

  Lord Bron rose and faced the Goddess. “I would not do as my parents do. I neither seek great power, nor do I shirk it, but I will not leave the side of those who have raised me.”

  “So be it,” intoned the Goddess. “The die is cast and the Gods have reached a decision. The human race will be stripped of the powers it has misused and these three will be banished beyond time and space. This sacred place by the side of the Fell, the stream that runs through the worlds and connects them all, will be the place that holds your leaders spirits to await their final reckoning. “

  It was at that moment I knew where I was standing. Where the Goddess stood on the dais was where the Post Office stands in my time. I was in my own valley.

  Lord Dar rose from his throne, laughing at the Goddess. “We are beyond your retribution. Our powers match those of the Gods and you cannot enforce your laws. Be gone Goddess, for the time of the Gods has passed.” He stretched his arms towards her with his hands clenched in fists and a blue light enveloped and enfolded the Goddess.

  Then the light dimmed to nothing and the Goddess stood before him unharmed. She made a gesture and he was flung back into his throne. He was held rigid with his arms pressed upon the granite arm rests and the living snakes upon his arms solidified. I could see his eyes darting from side to side but no part of his body could he move, though I saw the strain in his muscles as he tried and failed to get free.

  “Go to your resting place to die, so your spirit may be imprisoned,” the Goddess said, and for a second, the throne and Lord became transparent and then they solidified again. I could see what looked like a ghost above the throne. It was a black dog with red eyes that tried to attack the Goddess, but it was trapped within a globe of shining air, against which it pounded its paws remorselessly.

  “Oh be gone, I say,” the Goddess snapped in annoyance, and the throne and the dog in the air vanished.

  The young man stepped towards the Goddess, and though he was unarmed, it was clear he meant to attack her. He made gestures in the air and lightning struck from the clear sky at the Goddess. The dais caught fire around her and there were cries of horror and dismay from the crowd. But the Goddess was again unharmed and she walked through the flames without flinching to face Lord Bron.

  She made a dismissive gesture and the young man found himself pushed back into his wooden throne. He raised his hands as if to fight the forces that pushed at him, his palms pressed against a wall his finge
rs could not touch so his fingers were held out like claws. As he was forced back into the chair, both he and it took on the color and nature of granite. As the seconds passed by, his body slowly merged with the chair and lost all human features. As more seconds passed, he and his chair changed to become a familiar sight. They had become the Old Man of Fell. The shape of his hands reflected in the rounded cups within the granite.

  Lady Sutton hadn’t been idle during this exchange, and she threw something at the Goddess that looked like dust. It dropped from the air, passing through the Goddess as though she wasn’t there. Where it touched, the platform disintegrated in puffs of smoke. Though the dais vaporized around where the Goddess stood, it did not appear to affect her. She continued to stand on what was now empty air.

  The Goddess gestured and the Lady Suttor became as a puppet held by strings.

  “Follow,” she ordered and we did as best as we could as she set off towards where the Long Barrow is now. I could see in the moonlight that whenever this was taking place it was before the Long Barrow had been built.

  We had to scramble over the stream. I noticed my companions knelt and bowed low to the water before they dared to cross it, as if what they were doing was sacrilegious and required permission from the water.

  I slipped on wet stones and twisted my ankle. I suspect because I didn’t pay obeisance to the Fell. However, despite that I caught up with the Goddess as she strode forward with Lady Suttor unnaturally bouncing along beside her.

  When we were nearly at the top of the hill, the Goddess stopped and gestured. Lady Suttor walked jerkily into a clearing among the trees and then her body twisted, stretched and revolved as though she was made of clay rather than flesh. Before our eyes she become a oak tree, standing forty feet tall or more.

  The Goddess turned to us and gestured again and a group of people split from the crowd to stand alone. “I charge you, the noblest of the Sisterhood of the Moon to reside in this place until the end of time. Only your daughters may take your place and you must never move far or for long from the sacred Fell.”