Then the other life beckoned more strongly, overwhelming her. Damon was all but forgotten.
Samantha’s anxiety intensified even as she realized that he no longer mattered.
Her skin was becoming prickly all over, and she rubbed herself, thinking it might be merely goose pimples. The curious touch of her hands against her sweater. Wool on wool? She felt the urge to throw off her clothes, but before she could do so her skin began to lift, pulling itself against tenacious inner nerve endings, hair follicles and blood vessels.
Suddenly, shockingly, a cry rang against the beach and dispersed quickly into the night. Damon was heaving himself out of his complacency, but only in order to flee from what he was witnessing. He cried out again, a mixture between a scream and a raucous yell. Then he was hobbling as fast as he could back towards the distant town.
Samantha watched him, a shadow-shape lurching away, becoming smaller as each second passed, and it helped take her mind off what he had seen was happening to her. Then came an agonizing pain that flowed from her head, down her neck, arms, body and legs. As sharp as several scalpels cutting simultaneously and deeply beyond the subcutaneous tissue into the soft, unwilling, fatty red flesh that lay beneath her surface. A hollow tearing sound assaulted her ears, resembling the paring of a strip of thick, stubborn wallpaper from plaster in an empty room. Samantha bit her lower lip, fighting waves of hurt, and she sensed long incisors growing, clogging her too-small mouth. Finally, with one prolonged and graceful movement, as a stripper swirling off her last veil, or a shaman his earthly raiment, Samantha’s old flesh corkscrewed onto the beach along with her torn, ruined clothes.
She took a tentative step backwards. Gazing down, she watched as flaps and folds of skin collapsed within her outer garments. A thick film of blood dribbled from the livid white interior of the exposed shapeless mass. It was as if some recently eviscerated, decomposing cetacean had been washed ashore.
But the shed flesh was hers. Lying there, heat steaming off its exposed blood.
With a tremor and a fresh prickling of her new, drying skin, Samantha’s torment ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
Sitting up on hind legs, she preened her blood clotted whiskers and nose with the soft, tongue-wetted fur of her hands.
Her paws.
Samantha discerned that there was no longer any need to be frightened. She had taken the first step, a large one. Had she the time to contemplate, she might wonder whether there was any going back. She didn’t, because her thoughts were full of new possibilities. There was Damon and eternal boredom. Life weighted down and as grey as the leaden sky of winter. Samantha didn’t want that. She hadn’t wanted any of Damon’s tedium since coming here. Not his monotonous life which she had felt obliged to put up with. To which she had been bound.
Preferable, far more was what beckoned. She could transform herself now, one shape to another at will and with only transient pain. It was worth a little of that. To greet each new day with a deeper understanding of the enigmatic world of nature, and be able to mould herself to it in a thousand new ways.
It was freedom. Real emancipation at last. Nothing, but simply nothing and no one might lure her back from this most beguiling, glorious certainty. Least of all Damon.
And with the surging of her new heart, she once more listened to the voice in her soul. The voice began to recite in the ancient Scottish vernacular, only half understood, that witch’s spell she’d read in the museum:
“I shall go intill a hare, With sorrow and sych and meikle care; And I shall go in the Devil’s name, Ay while I come home again. Hare, Hare, God send thee care. I am in a hare’s likeness now, But I shall be in a woman’s likeness even now”.
With a mighty leap that earlier would have been beyond her wildest imagining, Samantha bounded off the beach and away from its stench. Across the road she skittered, racing south through heavily wooded valleys, scented with the heady musk of its inhabitants, as she headed for the hills and the new dawn rising over the primeval ruins on Lubas Crag.
Peter Tremayne
THE FOXES OF FASCOUM
Peter Tremayne is one of the pseudonyms of historian and bestselling Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis. In the horror and fantasy genres he has published more than twenty-five books under the Tremayne alias, beginning with Hound of Frankenstein (1977) and including The Curse of Loch Ness, Zombie!, The Morgow Rises, Swamp!, Nicor, Angelus!, Ravenmoon, Snowbeast and the recent omnibus Dracula Lives! His short stories have been collected in My Lady of Hy-Brasil and Aisling and Other Tales of Terror.
More recently he has written a number of short stories and novels detailing the investigative exploits of Sister Fidelma which, like the tale that follows, are firmly rooted in Irish history and mythology, as the author explains: “In this story, based on folktales heard in the lonely Comeragh Mountains (pronounced ‘Cu’mra’) of Co. Waterford, Ireland, it is were-foxes that concern us. The ‘vengeance tale’ is one often found in Irish folklore. Such motifs occur frequently in countries that suffered conquest and colonization and nowhere more so than Ireland.
“The serf-like conditions of the Irish peasantry were not alleviated until the Irish Land War of the 1880s when, finally, the feudalism of English landowners in Ireland was broken. It is hard to believe the absolute power these landowners had – a power equal to the aristos of France before the French Revolution.
“Small wonder, under such conditions, that revenge stories became a sub-genre of the folktales told around Irish hearths at night while others plotted and planned for the day when they could rise up and throw out the invader.”
The guide book had told me that the Comeragh Mountains in Ireland were one of the last unspoiled wildernesses in Western Europe. The guide book was right.
How did I come to be camping in those mountains in early September?
Well, I am secretary of our local rock-climbing and walking club back in Sheffield and our members were eager to widen their forays in search of good walking and climbing country. That was why I came to be in the south of Ireland. I had been delegated to check out the area for the club and, should it prove suitable, make arrangements for the club’s annual outing there during the following spring. I was going to go with our president, Tom Higgins, but, at the last minute, To m went down with flu and I wound up going to Ireland alone. Not that I really minded. Matter of fact, I preferred it that way. I enjoy walking and climbing alone. Maybe it stems from a solitary childhood.
Anyway, the point I am making is that as soon as I arrived in the area I knew that it would be ideal territory for our club. Not only did it offer good trekking country but provided marvellous rock faces for climbing. The Comeragh Mountains constitute over two hundred square miles of mountainous wilderness. When I started into the area, south from Clonmel, I realized that the recommendation to our club had been correct. The mountains offered splendid walking country but were trackless and needed care and preferably previous mountain experience. The mountains here averaged about two-and-a-half thousand feet in height, the highest being a mound of a summit called Fascoum at 2,597 feet.
I was in the area a few days before I came to Fascoum. I carried with me a lightweight tent and sleeping bag and so could wander as I chose. There were plenty of fresh mountain streams and springs, even sedate rivers and lakes. No one would ever starve here for there was wild life in plenty and in several places I could see brown trout near the surface of the waters, basking as if begging to be taken. However, I was well prepared with my own provisions without recourse to hunting the wild life. If I miscalculated, there were always one or two farms or cottages in the area, though not very many, where I could buy supplies.
Just beyond the broad sunlight-dappled slopes of Fascoum, with its jutting grey granite rocks ripping through the green carpet of grass and moss, I came across an overgrown path which meandered through stretches of brilliant gorse and fuchsia. The wild life seemed abundant and unthreatened by the presence of man the great predator. While the
occasional deer, red squirrel, and grey mountain hare, raised their heads warily at my passing, they did not flee from my presence. At one point I was surprised to pass near a rock a little way above me on the mountain side on which sat a dog. It was only when I gave it a second glance that I realized it was a wild fox, a large vixen staring down at me with pointed features and brightly reflecting grey-green eyes, the head surmounted by silver greying fur until it blended into the rusty red of its hide. I halted, delighting in the scene, staring back at the animal. It held its ground for a long while before throwing back its head, giving a sharp bark of disgust at being disturbed and then abruptly disappearing.
I continued on down the mountain path accompanied by the music of September bird calls which would now and then fall silent as I saw the black and white form of a darting hooded crow scavenging for food.
It was a beautiful, peaceful landscape.
It was nearing lunchtime and I had passed the skirts of Fascoum and traversed the valley towards the neighbouring height of Coumshingaun when I saw a small whitewashed cottage, with heavy weather-grey thatch. To my unexpected joy I saw it bore a brightly painted sign with the word’s “Dan’s Bar” on it and I immediately decided to stop for lunch.
There were only two men in the bar as I entered. The barman, who turned out to be none other than Dan the owner himself, and a man clad in workman’s clothes. Ireland is a friendly place to the visitor and they greeted me in amiable fashion. We immediately fell to talking about the countryside, its merits for walkers and climbers, and they recommended me to some out of the way spots which they thought I might gain profit by visiting.
Dan was a tall, lean, hooked-nosed sort of man. The type you would expect to see wearing an eye-patch and a pirate costume. The other, he introduced himself as Shawn Duff, was diminutive and whimsical, a man who looked so familiar that I had to think where I could have seen him before. It was only after some moments of concentrated thought that I finally realized that he was the image of the late Barry Fitzgerald, the movie star.
The conversation progressed, as passing conversations in pubs do, and Dan, hearing that I was surveying the countryside for our walking and climbing club, mentioned that he owned some property nearby which could be rented as a base for our prospective tour of the area. We discussed the matter and Dan was more willing to add to his income in this manner. We conferred on prices and then decided to exchange names and addresses for the official correspondence.
It was when I wrote down my name and address and handed it across the bar to him that a strange thing happened.
He took it, glanced at it and his whole face changed. His good-natured smile vanished, his mouth went slack and his eyes widened. Then he stared at me searchingly. Finally, without speaking, he pushed the paper across to Shawn Duff. The little man nearly fell from his precarious perch on the bar stool. His face wore a look of utter astonishment.
“It’s surely joking you are, mister?” he said softly.
I frowned, having no understanding of what was wrong.
“About what?” I asked bemused.
“What is your name?” demanded Dan. His voice was slow as if he were framing his words carefully.
“It’s there on the paper. My name is Trezela.”
I thought that I began to see why they might be surprised. I am used to astonishment or some slighting comment when I tell people my name. I gave a deep sigh.
“My name is Harlyn Trezela. It’s an old Cornish name.”
But their expressions carried more than simply a questioning of my odd sounding name. There was awe on their faces and something else . . . something I couldn’t quite fathom nor understand.
I gestured in irritation.
“I’m not Cornish,” I went on, endeavouring to explain. “But my grandfather was. He settled in Sheffield at the turn of the century. That’s where I come from.”
Dan seemed to recover himself first and gazed intently on the piece of grubby envelope on which I had jotted down my name and address.
“Tell me, sir,” he said softly, “how long ago was it that your family connected was with this place?”
I asked him what he meant by the question and when he repeated it I replied that my family had no connection with Ireland. In truth, I began to think he was rather weird and decided that I should drink up and be on my way. But he was staring at me in that curiously awed way. The little man, Shawn Duff was silent. It was then that I identified the look in his eyes. It was almost a look of animosity; a look of angry hate.
“No connection? Are you sure? No connection at all?”
“None at all,” I said slowly, as if I were dealing with someone hard of comprehension. “The name’s Cornish, not Irish. Why should there be a connection?”
The bar owner shook his head slowly.
“Mister, are you saying that you have never heard of the old Mountmayne house down the road here?”
“Never,” I affirmed. “Now what is all this about? Is it some kind of joke?”
Both men exchanged a long glance.
“ ’Tis no joke, mister.” It was Shawn who spoke now. “Castle Mountmayne is one of those old Anglo-Irish houses built in the eighteenth century. The earls of Mountmayne lived there until the days of the Land War. That was in the late nineteenth century when the old feudal landlord system was overturned in Ireland. You must remember . . . the times of the terrible evictions, the Land League, Captain Boycott, whose name has become part of the English language, and the dreadful happenings at Lough Mask?”
I sighed impatiently.
“I am not well up in history. To be honest, I fail to see what Castle . . . whatsitsname? . . . has to do with me.”
“Aren’t I telling you? Castle Mountmayne has been empty now these last hundred years. It is being demolished now and aren’t I working on that demolition?”
Dan nodded agreement at the little man’s annoyance, still staring at me strangely.
“Shawn has been working up at the old place these last few weeks,” he said, as if explaining everything.
“Only this morning,” interposed Shawn Duff, “I was pulling down some cupboards in the old house when I found a tin box.”
He paused and licked his lips. They seem to have suddenly gone cracked and dried. He took a swallow of his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“It was an old box, tucked away at the back of a wooden cupboard. The tin box had the name Trezela on it. Harlyn Trezela.”
I started chuckling.
Now I knew that it was a joke. A tin box with my name in a house in Ireland, where none of my family had ever been before, and which just happened to have been found when I was walking through one of the most desolate spots on my very first visit to the country. Who were they kidding?
“Come on, then,” I smiled. “What’s the punch line?”
“ ’Tis true, I swear it,” replied Shawn Duff.
“What’s the catch?” I insisted.
Shawn half rose in temper but Dan motioned him to stay where he was.
Dan glanced at me and shook his head seriously.
“What Shawn says is true. In fact, he brought the tin box here not an hour since, wondering what to do with it.”
I had a superior smile on my face now.
“In that case, perhaps you’ll show it to me.”
That would put paid to this nonsense, I thought in satisfaction. We would come to the meaning of their silly joking now.
Without a word, the bar owner reached under his bar and placed an object on the top of the counter before me.
It was a small metal box, some nine inches by six inches by three inches deep. It was rusty and dirt covered and had obviously lain discarded for many years.
My eyes went to the still legible calligraphy on top of the box.
They grew wide and my mind began to race.
There was no doubting the truth of the men’s statement.
There was emblazoned the name: “Harlyn Trezela,
1880.”
I shook my head with disbelief.
“It’s not possible.”
Shawn Duff was still annoyed.
“You might be right, mister. We find a box a century old and the very morning we find it, along you come, claiming the same name and yet saying that you are a stranger to the country. Just who are you, mister?”
“I am who I say I am,” I said, almost whispering, trying to understand the bizarre coincidence.
Dan smiled ruefully, scratching the tip of his nose.
“Perhaps now, mister, we should ask you to prove that you are who you say you are?”
In a stupor I reached into my pocket and handed across my driving licence. Both men bent to examined it. Shawn Duff let out a long, low whistle. Indeed, I saw his hand go up as if he were going to perform a genuflection. Then he let it fall.
“ ’Tis true, then. True, right enough. But what can it mean?”
I was staring at the box a long time.
Eventually, Dan continued: “It bears your name. Perhaps you should open it. We have already done so. It contains a letter. I was only saying to Shawn before you came in that he should take it down to the Guards at Lenybrien.”
“The Guards?” I tried to draw my mind away from the hypnotic attraction of the box.
“The Garda Siochana, the po’lis,” explained Shawn Duff in irritation.
“Is there anything inside besides the letter?” I asked.
“Only the letter in a packet. A packet in oilskins. We replaced it after we read it,” Dan said.
I leant forward, rather in a dream, and eased open the rusty hinges. It was obvious that it had recently been inspected for the lid opened easily enough. And it was true what they had told me. Inside lay an oblong packet of oilskin. I carefully unfolded it onto the bar and out fell a yellowing envelope.
It was addressed to Peggy Trezela. The name meant nothing to me. I knew of no one in my family of that name.
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 25
