“The Yule Log was lit to keep those monstrosities from entering through the gate. Stone altars are only one way. While those fires burn, they can never hope to enter. Even with the gate opened at its widest."
"For all your bravado about manhood, you sure cowered near the fireplace while I fought off that demon." I relished the moment. "I suppose all your talk extends only to coffee and men's fashion."
"Yes, yes. I admit it. You had your wits about you. Very well done. Now that your ego has been sufficiently stroked, can we get on with business?"
"What did you have in mind?" I asked.
"I’m proud of you. You’ve been listening during our talks, after all. You put together that the demon was the source, not only of the cold but of the odd divisive emotions we felt towards each other. You recognized that thing as the one of the Nameless whose ear you brought me earlier. On top of all that, you concluded that the fireplace, being an altar, was a gateway, and by lighting the fire you closed it from this side. Bravo!"
"Wait. What? No. I just knew that it made a horrible shrieking noise whenever it was near any heat source. I figured that meant it was in pain. So I made a bigger one." Dan shook his head for a moment. In the darkness, I couldn't tell, but I assumed he was trying to regain his composure.
"Either way, it worked out." Dan exhaled and continued along the path.
"I want to understand. How does this have to do with anything? Why are we on the way to town? What chance do we have against them?"
"Almost zero, but that has always been the case. By the looks of the empty houses and inactivity, most of the townspeople should be on Main Street for the Christmas parade. That’s where we can cultivate the most goodwill and light." Dan took advantage of the walk to relight his pipe with his lighter.
"Why haven't they tried to come through before now?"
"They do try. Every single year."
"What’s different about this year?"
"For the first time in millennia, a majority of the world has shunned the ancient traditions without knowing why they were put into place. Man has lived too long in comfort. To be sure, every so often, shades make it through and kill. However, they are too few to be well documented. Most wind up as myths or urban legends. Some result in suicides. Any way they can kill, they will, by any means at their disposal. To them, every death is a victory, and none too small to consider."
"I'm not sure if I understand how mistletoe and eggnog have anything to do with keeping these creatures back." I had trouble connecting the dots. What traditions were essential and which were not?
"The Nameless are a grumpy bunch. They have more irritability than fifty nursing homes filled with old men."
"Well, at least you can relate to the Nameless, then.”
"My point is that they hate cheerfulness, happiness, compassion, kindness—all the things the season is supposed to represent. The fact that you think these things inconsequential proves that tradition has fallen by the wayside. No doubt it’s due to their prodding over the decades. They aren't some arbitrary mish-mash of beliefs to be taken lightly. They were set in place to protect mankind.
"Take the Yule goat, for example. He’s there to ensure we maintain these traditions. He is none other than Dumuzid the Shepherd—Inanna's lover and her unwilling replacement in hell. By maintaining tradition and a lively spirit, we have halfway blocked the Nameless Ones’ entrance.
“Angels, demons, and gods would prefer to keep them locked away in the deep abyss to slumber for eternity. Krampus is one such demon who reminded children to do the right thing or there would be punishment. A small thrashing is really nothing in light of what the Nameless would bring to them. St. Nicholas is Krampus' alter ego."
"You mean to say that Jolly Ol' Saint Nick is a demon?"
"Didn't all the red tip you off? Or did you just think that was a good color for a large man who liked to sneak into people's houses at night?"
"I just didn't think the symbol for Christmas would be a demon. I thought all demons were evil." Now I was more confused than before.
"Everyone has a story, Caven. Some angels hate us out of jealousy. Some demons consider humanity their brothers. The universe has never fit inside a simple black or white existence."
"Why would he both punish and reward?"
"To maintain balance. Balance has always been the key to existence.”
"So, say we get to town and rally all the biddies and codgers into a fervor of warm, fuzzy feelings. What else do we have to do?" I swung the lantern around, thinking I saw something on the road behind us.
"We have to make a big fire. No doubt all electricity in the town has stopped working by now."
"What about the other cities across the world?" I had the sudden feeling we were being followed.
"I'm afraid, my friend, that they’re on their own. Come, we’re almost there."
"Everyone’s gathered at the old church."
We heard the desperate lament of the survivors carried on the chilled wind. We trotted the rest of the way until we met with the mayor, Rachel Evans. She looked to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown. No doubt she had never had to deal with a crisis before.
I had been on several adventures with Dan in the past. Largely, he used me as a resource on artifacts or archeological information. He had tried to teach me over the years, as I think he wanted me to be his assistant. Unfortunately, with the needs of my corporation, that never took root.
"Dan. Cavender. I am glad to see you alive. Almost everyone is inside. Well, the ones who survived, anyway. It was terrible, Dan! I went home with my husband to get a few things before the parade and it was there. That...thing. I couldn't see it clearly in the dark. I thought it was a burglar. It tried to attack me, but Arnold pushed me out of the way. I suppose Arnold thought it was a burglar too, because he took a swing at it. When his hand connected…oh, God." Rachel broke down into a stream of tears.
"We saw it too, at my place." I wrapped my arms around Rachel to give her some sort of comfort. "At least it didn't get you."
"It got Arnold. As soon as his fist hit, he disappeared. All that was left was a cold vapor in the shape of Arnold that turned into slivers of ice. When it absorbed him, it took on his features. I was so scared, I ran." Rachel sobbed into my shoulder. There was little else I could do.
"Rachel," Dan began, trying to be as kind as possible. "I know that I’m going to ask a lot of you by saying this, but I need you to be a leader right now. This town's hope rests on your ability to pull them together."
"What do you mean?" She looked at him like he had uttered something perverse.
"We need to build the biggest fire we can. A bonfire. We need to use every stray piece of wood and lumber we can find. We will need to go back to our homes with the flames of that fire and light our hearths. It's the only way we’ll be able to drive them away from here." Dan nervously fiddled with his pipe in his left hand.
"We need you to continue the celebration, Mrs. Evans." The shock of what I just said clearly showed on her face.
"These people are frightened. Whole families have died. How do you expect me to get them to sing Christmas carols now? Many escaped here, but—look!" She pointed to the edge of town. On the very edge of my vision, I saw the dark shuffling of the Nameless marching towards us.
"We don't have much time, Rachel. Pull yourself together. We need you do to this." I grabbed her firmly by the shoulders.
Rachel wiped her eyes and attempted to regain her composure. "All right."
"Get every man out here. We need to get this fire going immediately. The Nameless will be here soon." I helped her straighten herself out. She smiled bravely and nodded. Rachel went inside the church, and after several tense moments, men of all ages greeted us.
We worked in silence, and the temperature steadily dropped. Our bones ached with the cold despite thick, warm coats and scarves. The wind picked up and bit at our faces with the ferocity of a starved wolf. Breathing became labored and painful for every
one. All the while, the Nameless came closer. We could see them floating above the ground, wearing the faces of our friends and coworkers; sharp, needle-like teeth glistened in the little light we had created using spare lanterns.
We gathered enough wood to cover the entire square. When we went to strike the tinder with fire, the wind would blow it out. They shuffled closer and closer. The town was in a state of panic. The dark creatures had come to take us. Mothers and children cried. Older men and women quaked with fear instead of cold. Moans of despair floated through the air.
"Well, it looks like this is it," I said to Dan. All hope had evaporated from his face.
"I guess so, old friend."
I produced the whiskey bottle. Some of the oldest whiskey in existence. I uncorked it with a loud pop. "To an uncanny friendship." I took a long and healthy swallow. I tilted the neck of the bottle towards Dan.
"To a rewarding friendship." He took two gulps before handing it back to me. The Nameless stood directly across from us. Their feet did not touch the ground. They shuffled through the air as if the wind itself carried them. Some wore familiar faces, others were as grinning beasts. "See you in hell."
Dan struck his lighter and brought it to the bowl of his pipe. I threw the whiskey onto the wood pile. The bottle shattered majestically. Dan tossed the lighter after it. The wood ignited. We turned away to shield our eyes from the heat and our ears from the shrill screams of the Nameless.
"But not today," I said.
A cheer rose from inside the church and from the men on the street. The Nameless turned away into the pitch and cold. We didn't dare chase them. There was no need. We knew what we had to do. We sat there in the dust as the freezing cold dissipated. Men, women, and children began to sing. They celebrated and sung Christmas music well into the morning. Dan and I even joined in.
"Well, Dan, how about that coffee?" I asked as the first rays crested over the mountaintops.
"There's a diner not far from here. I don't think they serve those expensive lattes of yours."
"That's okay. From now on I want my coffee black."
About R L Daman
Host for AuthorTrope blog and recent I Made the Darkness writing contest, Roy writes horror and science-fiction stories. Roy takes his knowledge of mythology, psychology, and political science to create tales as entertaining as they are engrossing.
The Wild Hunt
By Anthony Stark
Inky night locked into the crevasses left by the landscape, blotting out the dream of dawn, of summer, of light. It was the waning of the year 770. In the wilds of East Anglia the sky was a wide blanket of innumerable, icy stars. Beneath its circumference, the fields and forests lay destroyed by frost, frozen in time, straddling the border between death and life.
Brother Erik gazed out at the tumbledown trail leading to the Abbey. Where the tall walls of limestone and granite stood, once there had been a small Roman fort; the shadow of the wall's line was still visible as a hulk under the blanket of snow. He shuffled through the powder that had fallen the week before. It had been thick and fluffy as it tumbled from the night's blanket, but had hardened to a mass of crystalline pellets with the bitter, clear, cold weather that followed. The only good thing the monk could say about the snow was that it didn’t soak into his wrapped feet—at least, not until he could get somewhere warm.
He was returning from a peasant's hut out in the forest beyond the Abbey; their daughter and son were ailing with the illness that came sweeping in with the freezing cold. Erik had medicines for them and a dispensation from the Abbot to give the Last Rites to them both. It was an honor, to be certain, for a monk to be given a vial of the Anointing Oil. It was blessed by the bishop at Eastertide when they relit the sacred candle of the Holy Spirit. The fact that the Abbot bestowed the vial to Erik by the gigantic hearth in his cozy chambers had not been lost on the young monk.
The moon started to rise above the horizon, blocked in part by the Abbey's gargantuan stone edifice. Erik hastened his pace toward the black maw that marked the heavy oaken doors of the structure. Moonlight crept toward him, illuminating the landscape with a thousand tiny sparkles, magnifying themselves off the frost on the trees and sparkling like an army of Faerie.
Erik twitched, crossed himself several times, and hurried his pace. He recited the Ave Maria, more in penance for having thought of the Faerie than as a ward of protection. He had been given to the monks of the Abbey by his parents eight winters ago, when he was just a small lad. Erik had a difficult time acclimatizing to the Catholic faith, even though his parents had taken him to church for all the high holidays. He had been strapped by the monks for leaving milk out at the rear door for the Brownies. He had been caned with a willow switch for speaking of the Faerie so many times Erik could feel the lashes’ lingering sting whenever he caught a glimpse of their wings in a tree or said their name in his head.
The truth was Erik didn't belong in the Abbey. He belonged in the forest with his parents, deeper inside its boughs than the hut he had just visited on this midwinter's night. His parents had left out milk; his parents had seen and talked with the Fair Folk of the wood. They had cut their animals' throats at the stirring of spring in the air and at the feast of All Hallows. They had a flint in their hut, embedded in the wall, that had been carved in the image of Thor. They rekindled their fires from it, not from the Holy Easter fire the monks and priests blazed at Eastertide. Although he knew they had given him over because they were starving and would most likely die in the woods they worshipped so much, Erik was not particularly appreciative of this new life into which they had placed him. He didn't belong inside stone walls, waking early in the morning and praying and toiling and cleaning and apologizing all day for the uncannily magical way he still did these chores, even after all these years. Erik belonged in the forest, or out on the heath, part of this inky black night, even though it was colder than the Abbot's disapproving gaze.
He nevertheless did not like to be beaten and despised by his fellowmen. They were, after all, the only people he had in the world. They also held the power of life and death over him. If he had not learned obsequious displays of penitence, they would have burned him as a heretic. If he had not learned the prayers, even the ones that turned their back on Thor, Freja, and the rest of the Old Ones, they would have gutted him like a Christmas pig. Erik had seen the same fate befall other acolytes in the Abbey, ones who had stood proud for their Old Gods, or had been too stupid to change to the New.
This was an uncomfortable situation in which he found himself. He was on the outer rung of the Abbey, he knew that; he had managed to hang onto it by making himself available for tasks no one else wanted to do. He cleaned the pest corpses...and lived. He journeyed hours in the cold to deliver victuals, medicines, and sacraments to the sick. He cleaned the garderobes. He milked the cows with the pox to keep their udders from impacting. In short, he was the whipping boy of the Abbey. Which was better than being a whipped boy.
Yet Erik always felt the tug of the Otherworld, the Old Ways and Old Gods who even now rested just underneath the surface of this fragile winter tableau of faith and rock. The pull of his blood, the faith of his fathers, was strongest at the four turning points of the year—winter, spring, summer, fall. It was a time of tension and balance, when the entire world caught its breath to see what, exactly, would happen next. Since Erik had tried to be “good” at the Abbey, he had endeavored to avoid being out in nature at these times of year. The call of his blood was too strong and he made mistakes, like lighting a fire in a field at All Hallows that spawned a bonfire worthy of a pagan king of old. Or seeing the Faerie, or thinking their names.
This was the season when, even in his parents' hut, Erik would have rather stayed inside. Beyond the cold that had long since merged with his bones and his tattered robes, beyond even the long night fraught with dangers of misdirection and wolves, came the Wild Hunt. At the top and bottom of the year, they rode, madcap, roiling in the sky like an army from the
depths of the Catholic Hell. But instead of demons with red skin and pointed tails, these infernal horsemen were pale, wan like the moon on this night, coursing with ice and snow, lofty of brow and haughty of expression. They were the court of the Elves, given leave by the extreme of the season to run roughshod over the soft, fleshy, weak world of men.
How they tumbled through the sky! Wreaking havoc in the wind, clawing at the curtains hanging in parchmented windows to keep out some of the cold. Killing farm animals with a look, a breath, they hurried along their path pell-mell across the countryside. On Midwinter's Eve, the night belonged to Them.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Erik said aloud to blot out his thoughts. “Protect me, a lowly traveller, from the evils in the night, from the killers in the dark. Keep me safe from them.” He crossed himself again, and the thoughts faded...for only a moment. They flooded back again with all the verisimilitude of truth; Erik was out on Midwinter's Eve, alone, exposed—and the moon was rising. Its light was almost to his feet now, casting a blanket of shimmering white ice before itself as it lit the way for the Wild Hunt.
The shadows of night passed under his uncertain footfalls and the moonlight touched his rag-wrapped foot. At once, Erik was galvanized. He felt a shivering finger of energy race up him, the living light of the lunar goddess at full glory in the longest night. It electrified him, magnetized his flesh against his bones. He felt alive again, felt the tendrils and dusty fingers of the Faith drop away from their death grip on his mind like so many dead leaves. He dropped the basket with the Anointing Oil in the snow and walked a few more steps, heedless.
It was then he heard the wind.
It roared over his head like a demon from Hell with wings sluicing up slipstreams of sparkling snow in curving spirals of mystery. Erik raised his head to look but saw nothing, just an arcing wave of snowdust in the sky above his head, shining like the moon itself. He turned in a staggering circle, eyes dazzled by the growing illumination of the moon's light. The snow, powdered by days of still, high skies, was fine as bone meal; it rose in billowing streams around him and curled over his head in ivory arcs and eddies, crossing and re-crossing tendrils like the borders of the blankets his mother had decorated—the same the Abbot had ordered burned. Like the edges of a manuscript Erik had illuminated for the Abbot, with the words of God inside its margins.
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