MicroHorror

It was Epiphany. Snow fell thickly over the graveyard among the trees and on the narrow path designed for biers–not hearses. We parked and walked back towards the older headstones that leaned uniformly toward the path from the subsiding bank rising on the right, among tree roots frozen by time and this bitter chill. Tall conifers scraped the heavy sky and ivy tangled, clinging on to everything for dear life amid dead leaves–so picturesque.

I took my camera out and snapped the scene.

Quite without warning my spouse pushed me to one side and sprang to the other.

“What are you doing, pushing me?”

“I thought I heard a carriage, a–a cart or something coming from behind but…”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“It really felt real. Spooked me.”

“You don’t believe in that sort of thing.”

There was a sudden flurry and beating wings among the greenery.

“There, you see?” I said. “It’s just wood pigeons squabbling.”

“I expect they don’t like the snow.”

“And nor do I.”

The place was utterly deserted as we trudged to the grave we’d come to visit and laid our wreath–a little late this year because of severe weather. We didn’t linger for the cold, but returned immediately to the car, glad to sit in heated comfort again. The snow fell heavier as we drove off, the air a thin white gruel of it.

The carriage came from nowhere, its pallid lamp alight. It looked a few hundred years out of time. There was no place to pass.

“Oh, God!” I shuddered and spoke the words aloud.

I saw the horse’s hooves crash through the bonnet and my heart lurched. I covered my face with my hands but the apparition passed straight through us.

“What the blazes is wrong with you?” said my husband, braking hard due to my reaction.

“I–nothing,” I said. He hadn’t seen it. It wasn’t real. “It was nothing. It’s just–spooky here, like you said.”

“Well, don’t ever do that to me again!”

Upon returning home I uploaded the photo I’d taken. There on the photograph, a yellow orb above a certain headstone–I had seen no light.

“What do you suppose that is?” I asked my husband.

“Trick of the light,” he said and looked away.

I told him what I’d seen.

I had to know whose grave–but not any time soon. I walked over the new spring grass, admiring the resurrected snowdrops until I reached that grave–the one with the light. . I was wearing a cross. I never wear a cross, but today I did. It looked peaceful and benign today in bright sunshine.

The headstone read:

Two hundred years to the day the photo was taken.

The elves pushed their chairs back and groaned. No one spoke.

“There’s nothing like a good Christmas roast,” said Glitter. It sounded a bit forced.

“Best ever!” said Gretchen. That sounded equally forced. There was a kind of finality to this feast that required a degree of solemnity. It was the end of an era.

“Tinsel, you out-sparkled yourself, girl.”

Tinsel blushed, knowing it.

“Yep! Here’s to you!” Spice emptied his flagon and farted loudly. The others ignored his lack of sensitivity.

Time was, a hundred elves would be seated around tables here in the workshop, singing and celebrating the success of the season well into New Year. Tinsel had cooked turkeys and hams, jellies and puddings that would do the heart good to see, and beers, breads and homemade sloe gin. That was before–they were just a handful now and they weren’t exactly celebrating. There’d have been more fun at a wake.

“What do we do now?” Pickles, always ahead of every game, sounded unsure for a change.

“The dishes?” said Gretchen, hopefully.

Pickles gave an exasperated sigh. “I mean, what do we do now?”

“As in?” inquired Sprinkle.

“As in, for instance, do we open the mail?”

There was already a pile stacked up in the corner and they all knew that if it wasn’t tackled bit by bit, it would build to a mountain in no time at all. However, none of it was addressed to them. Suddenly the dishes seemed to be the least of their problems.

“It doesn’t seem right somehow.” Glitter’s voice sounded small. “I know we used to help with the mail, but…”

“We’re going to argue ethics now?” said Pickles.

“You mean we should just carry on like before?” Franzipan had always been a keen worker. He specialized in handmade wooden toys, but the big stores with their mass-produced mouldeds meant he was the only one of his department left. It seemed there was little demand for craftsmanship. Santa had been going for cheaper options for years. It was more cost effective.

All that was part of the original dispute.

“It’s a consideration,” said Pickles, self-appointed shop steward through all the unpleasantness of the past months.

Franzipan had become bitter. “Whoa! Weren’t we made redundant? Let go? Cast aside? Cost-cutting exercises, remember? The economic downturn? Trimming the fat?”

“We could become a co-operative. Go it alone,” said Pickles.

“But nobody can afford Christmas any more. That’s what he said.” Glitter’s voice kind of swallowed itself.

“That’s right, comrade. And why should we work now? We have a roof over our heads; plenty here to eat.”

“Plenty of what?” asked Gretchen.

“Venison. We have a breeding herd.”

“But I like the deer.”

“Me too, Gretchen, but as Santa himself pointed out, there’s no room for sentiment in times like these–nice with redcurrant jelly on the side, too. You can manage that, can’t you, Tinsel?”

“Just as long as I don’t have to behead them myself this time.”

“Involuntary severance,” reminded Pickles, “and again, as Santa said, commerce is our business. He’d be the first to realize it’s nothing personal. Now–what about that mail?”

“I think we ought,” said Sprinkle.

“But we can’t deliver toys without logistics.” Franzipan thought of the beautiful sleigh he’d made so long ago. It had been replaced by ugly, fuel-guzzling lorries and now sat rotting in a shed, eaten away by profit.

“Someone should let the kiddies down gently. Whatever else happens, Santa definitely isn’t coming to town this year.”

It was a hideous truth.

Spice rubbed his rotund belly contentedly and picked a strand of white hair from between his teeth. “Tough old bird! Had to be, I suppose, old-timer like that. Been everywhere. Done everything.”

Franzipan gave him a look of disgust. “Ghoul! Nobody said you had to eat boots and all.”

Spice just laughed.

“It is time,” said Poseidon. “Time to call in the debt for all humanity’s offences against me.” He raised his arm out of the salty deep and his golden trident glinted on the horizon.

Prometheus, ever the champion of man, brought forth his fire in defense. People saw the event as nothing more than the rising of the sun on the rim of ocean mists, but the cloud above it was like the shadow of a great green face whose emotions reflected the deep turbulence of the ocean.

“What about when he was gentle?” asked Prometheus. “What about when his children played at your feet and their voices thrilled with delight?”

“I call all creatures of the deep this day…” boomed Poseidon’s thunderous voice.

“What became of the souls you devoured? Where are the ships that drowned all hands at sea? What of Titanic?”

“They taunted me. Said even God could not sink her.” Poseidon continued with barely a pause, “…to rise against the scourge that poisons my shoals, that causes explosions in my belly, that chokes my sweet tropics with clouds of dark refuse…” his voice rolled on like a great wave.

“What about the cities you have taken, the settlements dispossessed? Atlantis, Doggerland, Pavlopetri, many more! Has there not been reckoning enough?” Prometheus’ voice was wrung with empathy, but his intervention only poured fire on water.

“They dissolve my subjects’ skins with sores and pour out foul, corrosive waste. They corrupt. I was free to everyone,” he said, “but they made profit from me, used me as both a weapon and a balm, and yes, mankind, my memory is long–longer then the half-life of the world–but my patience has reached its crest and must now break.”

So came the Ashrays, Bunyips, Cetos, Dragon Kings. So came the Grindylows, the Kraken, Melusine and Loreley, the Selkies and all monsters of the deep. Even the Naiads and those who dwelt in shallow pools and wells and waterfalls obeyed his bidding. They rose and carried out their works of lore, to lure and kill as many as they found. Madness took many folk and drove them to jump from cliffs. Others rode horses of death into deep pools. Men fell under siren spells. Women took mermen to their bed. Each perished. Then Poseidon shook the ground beneath the seas, and all the land he retook for his domain.

A lone ship sailed the ocean that was Earth. The Charon picked up any who cried out; keelhauled them until there was nothing left but shreds of flesh at the end of tattered, bloody rope.

Poseidon heeded no cries for mercy, but threw his great head back and laughed and laughed. Yet as he laughed new islands dared appear, born from fire inextinguishable in the deep, so that as mankind died, land was reborn. Together water and fire gave rise to life.

“Sylvia,” she called, “be a darling and fetch me another coffee–this one’s gone cold.”

“Sylvia, would you mind awfully, darling, bringing me an extra towel?”

“Just a little higher, dear. My left shoulder has been quite tense lately.”

Massage, manicure, pedicure, spa treatment–this was her weekly pamper time and Linda Lux was used to the best of treatment. She didn’t suffer from any particular ailment but she liked her feet to remain smooth and soft, so she relaxed with a magazine as the little carp did their work.

She didn’t believe in all this tosh about how the fish might get sick or die from lotions and chemicals on the skin. She scoffed at the notion that tank conditions might not be ideal or consistent from spa to spa. And as for exploitation… this was a beauty parlor, for God’s sake, not an aquarium, and they were just fish. It wasn’t as if they were intelligent or aware–rather like Sylvia herself, she surmised.

When time was up, Linda Lux put aside the article she’d been reading, looked down into the water and screamed. Her feet–her feet were in shreds. Skin hung like rags from white bone. She screamed and screamed but no assistance came. There was no sign of blood but the fish were still feeding and she above her ankles in water and still no one came.

“The calcite block measures near as damn 26 square feet,” said Alban. “Can we lift that tonnage, Fossey?”

“25.81, to be accurate.”

“You can’t have decimal points in imperial measurement, Fossey,” said Jeffers.

“They do on TV.”

“Yeah, they’re dicks!”

“You know what 25.81 is squared, Jeffers?” said Fossy, “666.”

“25.8069758011, actually. What I said!”

Jeffers was site geologist. Fossey controlled Ops.

“Gentlemen!” Alban intervened. “This is the largest single doubly-refracting crystal ever discovered. If we can lift this, Spar-Cal will dominate optics for the rest of this century and beyond. I want it in one piece.”

“We could blast the east face,” said Fossey.

“And risk damage,” said Jeffers. “There may already be incipient fractures along the cleavage lines. And for the record, some of it might be worthless–just light stone. Then there’s potentially clay strata, tubules, water bubbles… the Geo-bot can’t tell us that stuff. Anyway, it’s been coming up with some peculiar readings. We need to get down and take a proper look.”

“How about divers?”

“We lost three in our initial surveys. There is periodic seismic activity. If you fancy getting poached to death, feel free.”

Spar-Cal Inc. was unwelcome in the region. Some evil lay beneath the waters of Devil’s Cup and people were superstitious. Opposition was fierce against water from the tarn being drained into the municipal supply. Anyway, it stank!

“Well, I don’t care how you do it; I want to be in place by spring,” said Alban.

“Then I suggest you find some other way to drain the tarn,” said Jeffers.

Work was begun on a drainage reservoir.

The tarn nestled between craggy outcrops in the basalt landscape. Veins of spar, laid bare by erosive streams filtering though sedimentary rock onto the black plateau, formed the great quarry bowl. Vaporous mists rose and lingered around its rim. Numerous pale, interlocking seams ramifying through the basalt gave the rock a bloodless, veined appearance. These calcite fingers converged and dipped under the water at a certain point, leaving a formation that resembled a hand grasping the upper ledge at the steep west side and oftentimes, when the moon was full, that deadly hand could be seen glistening white and pale, a long way off.

Slippages were sudden. Six men working the pumps–suddenly a shudder, and one of the calcite fingers shored off and crashed down the section. They were crushed. Twelve more building the reservoir struck a hidden lagoon and were swept away by a wall of water.

As the calcite block was uncovered, a putrid fog rose from the bowl into the thin air and dropped back to the cold earth in greenish fingers of dank mist.

Fossey was preparing lifting gear up on the ridge.

“Jeffers?”

He sounded agitated.

“Can you get up here? I want you to see… what th–”

The line went dead.

Jeffers passed members of the team, descending. They looked pale and terrified but couldn’t speak.

The calcite surface was perfectly smooth and clear as ice. Its polarizing qualities, layered, double layered, superb but…

Fossey stood teetering on the far rim. A long tendril of spar twisted round his left leg.

“Jeffers! For God’s sake help me!”

Jeffers was mesmerized, incapable of movement. The block… it was slowly rising on its own, as if being raised up by some force from beneath. And there were faces, hands, mouths screaming, frozen in terror, pressed against the lower side of the block, yet clearly visible. They were innumerable–unspeakable. He recognized the three, the six and the twelve. Their expressions were hideously contorted. Beneath them rose demonic, vile, inhuman species and licking at their heels–the flames of Hell.

A scream. “Jeffers!”

His eyes followed the direction of the sound. Fossey was being dragged into a crevice between the calcite plug and the dark rock walls. Jeffers tried to move. Looking down, he saw a vein of calcite curl around his feet. His heart froze.

Inexorably, the block rose.

Le Patron du Café Solutré called them Gringons. “Only thirteen hands,” he said. “Camargues are born black. Later they turn white but keep a dark undercoat. They require no stabling or shelter of any kind. They are docile enough for children yet strong enough to herd bulls. Tenacious. Monsieur…?”

“Cathar,” I told him.

“Then,” he said, “You are come home!” He kissed me roughly on both cheeks and told me the story. “But, méfiez-vous, mon brave.”

No village now stands near that cemetery. The spongy bog has swallowed history and shrouded it in protective mists. Deserted and overgrown within its walls la Cimetière des Gardians lies desolate and though I had reason to be there that autumn morning, I experienced a certain trepidation and shuddered as I wandered amongst its nameless tombs. They were of marble: Incarnat du Languedoc elaborately carved. It is a striking stone, its splattered white and crimson veins all too redolent of splintered bone and spilt blood.

I approached the vast monument upon a central plinth; bare but for a short inscription in Occitan which, of course, I could not read. 500,000 souls wiped out by two generations of inquisition. Nobody knew how many lay here or who they were.

“Kill them all. God will know His own,” said the Abbot of Béziers.

Catholic, Cathar, Jew, it mattered not, as long as this “Synagogue of Satan” was erased and with it that heretical obscenity–Occitan.

Others fled as wandering troubadours, some members of my line no doubt. Faidits ou morts–a brutal choice. The faithful horses, held by strong bonds of loyalty to folk that would take no oath nor swear any fealty, remained close, watching over the dead.

Then one night these “manades,” semi-feral once, now fully wild, ran amok–driven mad by lonely, protracted grief. In their madness they stampeded. Their eyes, they say, shone gold amid the night. One bit another. The bitten one turned red. One by one they joined in hideous blood-rage. They broke the gates and rampaged through streets that had been settled by their herdsmen’s killers; turning all colors, red to gold to blue, purple and green. (Camargues are not white.) Skeletal they were, with yellowed teeth and frightened eyes. They were distraught and savage in revenge. Their teeth ripped flesh, tore sinew, and any that survived the bite were cursed to die days, sometimes weeks later of crazed fevers that terrorized their fitful dreams; their upturned eyeballs became deathly white. And when that night of hatred was at end, there were no more white horses to be seen. But in the graveyard stood, atop the plinth, a woman with flowing hair, who rode upon a pure white unicorn of finest marble of a type not found in Languedoc or nearby. Its single horn speared the surrounding miasma.

And if I say I began to believe, I had no choice. I heard them. Heard them whinnying close by: les manades. I dursn’t look behind. I perceived as it were a ripple, a wispy change in the mists, like warm breaths disturbing the morning airs. I heard a trampling of impatient hooves and knew they stood behind me. The mists changed color with an eerie glow: red here, a livid green, a subtle gold to purple then cold blue. It was, I told myself, but the residual shades of an autumn sunrise–only I knew better. The sun ought to be high by now. They were waiting for me to reveal whether I was friend or foe. I had no language I could use with them. If I uttered French they’d surely trample me. These were horses of Occitan and I knew little of my kin. I pitied all the souls of that tormented place.

And now a single drop of purest water dripped from the horn of the marble unicorn onto my head. I looked up. The horses reverted back to myth and mist. “Perhaps,” I thought, “the Lady knows her own.”

One wall remained, barely visible, before the excavations began. Year on year the site expanded. From Càrn a’ Marbh the valley ran down to a loop in the river and the red fertile plain. Nothing grew up here. It was a dead place.

“So, why put a settlement on top of a barren ridge?” asked Hogan. He was a beardy first year, keen to impress. Doctor Dalbach brought three promising students up here each summer. The place was exceptionally beautiful, windswept, open and ever changing. It was easy to imagine all manner of illusions in the sudden mists that descended from the top.

“One might suppose some military purpose or religious significance.”

“People round here say it’s haunted,” said Cecilia.

Cecilia was already troweling away at some loose deposits round the base of the keystone.

Hogan eyed her tight buttocks peeking out beneath the puffy anorak.

“People will say anything,” said Dalbach. “Archaeological evidence is the only way to ascertain…”

Deirdre pulled a stray blond strand away from her mouth and exchanged an exasperated glance with the others.

“I think maybe I found something,” said Cecilia.

The doctor cleared his throat gruffly. “Remember, any finds, no matter how seemingly insignificant, must be properly catalogued.”

As Cecilia examined the object, Dalbach’s voice faded into the background. The fragment was miniscule: round, white and so very fragile–part of the orbit of an eye perhaps–a tiny eye. Another sound asserted itself subliminally, the sound of a child crying out in distress. Cecilia shuddered as the fragment dissolved in her hand. “I thought I had something, but…” she muttered.

“Well, a wall this size needs a firm foundation,” said Dalbach, “and it’s important to find out what that is. I’ll leave you to it now.” He strode off down the hill towards the local pub. Somewhat surprised, they watched him go.

Cecilia looked ghastly.

“Are you all right?” asked Hogan.

“Needs a firm foundation…” said Cecilia. “It needs a firm foundation. It needs a firm…”

Hogan took her by the shoulders and helped her to her feet. “Cecilia? What on Earth’s the matter?”

Deirdre came to help. “C? You’re gibbering.”

But Cecilia’s whole body was shaking and she just kept on repeating the phrase. “Needs a firm found…”

“Stop it, C.”

“Cecilia, you’re scaring us,” said Hogan.

“Is it some kind of fit or what? Hogan, do something.”

“I hate to do this, but…” Hogan slapped Cecilia hard. For one moment she looked straight at him. Then his expression changed from one of concern to horror. Cecilia looked at the trowel in her hand, raised it and poked Hogan’s eye out.

So shocked was he, he offered no defense but stumbled backward and fell hard against the wall. Deirdre screamed but Celia didn’t stop. She gouged at Hogan’s eye socket as he writhed helpless on the ground. The bloody eye slithered, still attached, on his cheek. His blood drained into the foundations.

Deirdre attempted to wrench the trowel from Celia’s grasp but she was a maniac. And that’s when Deirdre too saw. The face was no longer Celia’s face. It was that of an infant child: a face wild, hideous with glee and blood-lust, splattered with Hogan’s blood.

“Celia, no!” Deirdre lost her footing. Demonic chanting was all around. A circle of baying children closed in and trampled all three–mulched them into the foundations.

When Dalbach returned, something that looked like them awaited him on the cairn. A new section of ancient settlement stood proudly above ground. “Is it done?” he asked.

“It needed a firm foundation,” said one, “but yes. It is done.”

“Blood for blood. Bone for bone,” said the second. “It is done.”

“Our contract is renewed.”

“Then shall we go?” Dalbach led three more lost children of Càrn a’ Marbh to their resurrected life among the living. Gradually, as he’d agreed long ago, this settlement would be reconstructed in blood and the time would come when zombies stalked the valley once again.

“What did the doctor say?” asked Ruth.

“He seemed to think it was benign.”

“Thank God for that.”

“I’d like a second opinion, though. Would you take a look?”

“I’m no doctor, but…”

“Ooooh!” said Ruth in wonder.

From Beryl’s shoulder grew a perfectly horrid little red demon, stubby horns, goatee beard. It eyeballed Ruth.

“I’m not a bleedin’ freak show,” it said in a low, ratchet voice.

Ruth jumped back, terrified. “Does it often do that?”

“Not until now,” said Beryl.

“You’ll have to have it cut off,” said Ruth.

“Over her dead body!” warned the demon.

Playa Paradiso was where the ghosts came to live and just such ghosts as would grace any stately home in England. Pale, abstemious and regular of habit, they brought nothing to the world but their presence. They did not engage with it. They adhered to routine as only ghosts can, appearing and disappearing with precise regularity, at times and in places of their own choosing.

Cecily craved the warmth she still remembered, but the unrelenting sunshine here only pierced her pale body and so she put up shutters against the long day as each siesta drifted ever closer to eternal rest. Each evening, hidden in shadows, she negotiated the narrow corridor of streets to some favorite haunt where she would “hang.”

You could see others “hanging” there too–apparitions of terrible aspect to the truly alive–quiet echoes of mortality, occupied in meaningless activities. They played at cards but held no more aces. For each of them, routine brought only the tedious intimacy of other ghosts of equal introspection, and introspection mirrored futility, and futility sought out routine.

Cecily waited eagerly for glimpses of her children and grandchildren, but they had their own agenda and language. They spoke a little too quick and a bit too soft for easy comprehension. Their presence shattered her memories and prized possessions alike. Their visitations had become unsettling and disruptive. At their departure, Cecily was pleased to pace the past again. Still she stared at photos with longing, already forgetting their presence.

In her snapshot of happiness, familiar scenes played in a loop, vintage stories were recounted, old wounds carefully tended. Silence grew within her. She spoke little. Those who could hear did not listen and those who listened could no longer hear. It didn’t matter. She had nothing to tell. There is little to attend to in a ghost.

One by one, companions faded away and Cecily could only follow each grim procession, husband, friend, acquaintance–grave–knowing.

Beyond Playa Paradiso, there was nothing.

We’d been diving the wreck of the Prie Dieu for two seasons, cradling up gold coin, copper, brass, precious china, some displaced bone. It was a painstaking task and not without incident–Perry, for one. He was an experienced diver I’d known for years but we all get a little rattled down there sometimes and when he told me about his little… episode… I was dismissive. “We don’t even know whether the ship’s bell is down there but you find it for me and I’ll give you a big hug–make you feel all better.’

“I’m telling you I didn’t hallucinate. I heard what I heard.”

The next day they found the ship’s bell but Perry was lost retrieving it. He got caught up in some tangled mass on the seabed and they couldn’t get him free. Then a shark appeared out of nowhere and… There was a lot of stuff like that going on.

Curtis swore he saw a face staring at him from a porthole. I suggested it was his own reflection.

“I damned well know a diver when I see one!”

I suspect he’d been down too long, wanting to “finish the job,” but he was adamant it wasn’t psychosis and left the dive.

We brought up the last timbers to be desalinated, water replaced with preservative resins. The Prie Dieu was a hull again. But the trouble didn’t stop there. Very soon, visitors to the museum started reporting things. Children had seen men climbing the rigging. There was no rigging–just men climbing midair. Women heard screams from below deck though there was no deck, just a Perspex sheet to show where it would once have been. We had grown men shuddering with fear at the cries of sailors long lost to the sea.

I’m a skeptic. I don’t belief in all that hoo-ha but to keep the peace we encased her in a display cabinet, soundproof, specially built, with all her artifacts displayed around her, bell, coins, skeletal remains–the lot. We even got a priest to come along and bless her.

Then last week: “There’s people screaming in the Prie Dieu display.” The attendant seemed quite distressed so I went along. This time I saw for myself–the display tank filled with water, a man desperately trying to get out, bubbles rising from his hair and clothes, drowning before our eyes, pleading for help, his eyes wide in terror.

With horror, I realized–it was Perry.

Someone from behind me grabbed a fire extinguisher and flung it, shattering the tank. But there was no water. Nobody inside the tank. No visitors screaming. No attendant. Just the wreck of the Prie Dieu and me and hideous, hideous laughter.