Chapter 4 – Chap 4

The twisted song of the abbots of the abyss may have been forced to a close, but the bells of the dark cathedral ring on. I grimace and look to ma left as the furious waves crash ceaselessly against its walls, the light beyond those blue-black windows of wet, stained glass flashing and flowing… a poor attempt at enticement indeed, I’d say. I’m sure as fuck not going anywhere near the bloody thing, and I dread to think what terrors lurk inside.

I hear from behind me the desperate voice of one of the monks, still stood uncertainly on the rock of the island. The symphony of the rain and wind and sea is too loud, however, and I am unable to catch what he says.

I swivel and reply with a blast of the shotgun. Another spectacular miss, by a wide margin.

“Piss off ye pescatarian pansies”, I mutter through my sopping beard, “ma destiny is with the Door tonight”. And she lies ahead, the Door. Every time she catches the light of my faithful rotating light, every time that golden reflection shines back at me from her position at sea I make sure to adjust my course as best I can, riding the waves towards her.

“I am the fire upon the sea!” I call out, to no-one in particular, ma wee boat a burning and sparking ember of red fire in the cold and dark and the swell and the swirl; “I will claim victory over the BEAST!” The sky answers with drums of thunder and I grimace, wiping the sting of the sea-spray from my eyes.

As I sail further out across the intemperate waves, leaving the island and the cathedral behind, shimmering white shapes start to emerge from the surrounding water. They are not swimming, nor are they even wet, it would appear. It does not seem like they are even fully ‘here’ at all.

Five men with skeleton faces, unconcerned by the blaze of the flare and gliding through the air, drifting legless around and around the boat, muttering and whispering through faded jaws.

“O honourless wretch” the first begins, hovering by my left as I steer desperately through the churn.

“O breaker of his word. He who would abandon his duty at the time of its greatest need”.

He drifts behind and a second comes up on the right, his words a winter’s chill upon my cheek, “You have forsaken the bond unbroken of the keepers of the tower. You forfeit your place in their halls in pursuit of a SHINING DOOR”.

I keep my eyes upon the Reflection. My lighthouse guides the way.

The being shimmers away and a third comes up from behind. I feel his breath like frost on the back of my neck, “All that glitters is not gold, lighthouse keeper. Your solitude has left you blind…”

“AWAY WITH YE, DESPAIRING WIGHTS OF THE DEPTHS!” I roar to a streak of lightning, “Ye’ll not silence the spark of ma spirit with your cold clichés! I will not turn back! Not this day, nor any other! My path is set and I follow the light! Dogsbodies such as ye know only the dark of the deep! What advice have YE to offer ME? BEGONE!”

And bitterly, they do. Twisting and spiralling, muttering and simmering and returning to the white-grey of the sea froth, lost to the storm.

I tug my battered blue coat further round my shoulders. I pull hard on the ropes. The flare fizzles and sputters under the pressures of the rain and the flicks of the tails of the waves.

“Hold tight you bastard”, I growl to the flame, “hold tight for just a tad longer, you can do it”.

A naked torso rises from the water to my side. Then another, and another still. I glance down to them, and I’ll give them credit, they are beautiful. Hair long and wet, draped down the sides of their faces and further into the sea; their eyes wide and blue; their mouths coy, smiles that plead innocence but hint at so much more. They swim alongside and I see the silver of their scaled tails shining as they glide, keeping easy pace with ma vessel.

“Douglas…” the middlemost calls; she tucks a wet lock behind an ear and looks up at me from beneath her lashes, her voice a river, strong and yet soft, she traces her fingers along the rim of the boat, “Douglas Bannerman… it’s not too late for you, my captain of fortitude… but the sea threatens to take you, sailor. And she will not be kind. She DESPISES your bravery, she ENVIES your fire, and she RESENTS your masculine, single-minded determination…”

One of the ladies dips below the surface and swims beneath, appearing up on the other side.

“She doesn’t understand you, Douglas, and she never will…” she says, “but we DO! You can HAVE us, Douglas! We will be yours and you will be ours! Submit yourself to us, and we can save you!”

The third joins the first and strokes her sister’s hair, she plants a soft and tender kiss on the creature’s cheek. She smiles at me, her eyes pleading. “The sea has no power over us, Douglas. She bends to OUR will, as she could to YOURS! WE could belong to you, Douglas, you just have to reach out… and take us!”

I square my shoulders against the driving rain. Tearing my eyes from the glow of their beauty and adjusting my course. The boat rocks up and around under the duress of the watery siege.

“Your offer is kind, mermaids fair from the world below!” I call back to them, jaw set, “but I have no desire to bend the sea to ma will- I ask for nought but a little cooperation, just enough to see me through!”

I deign not to look directly at the ladies in the sea as I speak, but in the corner of my gaze I spy shadows dark and unnatural forming around their eyes. I can sense them seethe with my sixth sense. “And whilst your beauty is enough to take away the breath of any man, land or sea, my heart belongs to another, and will to the end of my days. So I thank you, sea-maids, but my answer is no”.

They hiss in response; a frightening scrape of a sound that sends goosebumps shootin’ doon ma back, and they scratch at the sides of the boat. I pay them no heed and they disappear back below the waves, tails splashing as they descend down into the darkness.

The Door approaches.

The waves smash up against the bow of the boat, they throw themselves around in a frenzy, and as they do so they drag me along with them. To my right, the sea spouts upwards in a sudden pillar of water. I swear in a shout of alarm as it merges with the rain; the waves below froth and part to allow a titanic and terrible tentacle to burst from beneath; a searching, slimy arm of an ancient monster from a time gone by, water cascading from the appendage as its brothers rise up alongside. They writhe and pulse and arch and convulse in strange and bewildering patterns, blindly reaching out for potential prey to drag beneath. I duck as a tentacle whips suddenly round just above ma head, catching thankfully on nothing but salty air. The monster roars from the deep and the waves drop, only for a moment, and a great and grinding beak, a gaping void of a mouth, hungry and merciless, becomes visible just below the surface. I steer madly to the side, away as best I can from the lurch of the wavering arms.

The monster moans again, and the sound rises to a bludgeoning, watery wail, quickly becoming one with the thunder beyond.

The tip of a tentacle finds its way onto the boat, and I hasten over, kicking it away with a few well-placed stamps. But I’m on its fucking radar now. Closer, the tentacles slither, seeking me out with an animal hunger. One of them swings viciously down from above, red in the glow of the flare as it comes right at me. I angle the shotgun up high and send a blast out to meet it, splattering a healthy chunk from the tentacle as it careens suddenly backwards in distress. The sea to my right rises and shifts worrisomely, and I get the impression that the colossal monster is adjusting his position.

“I won’t be your supper tonight, kraken of the North!” I shout loud, firing off another blast at an approaching arm. “I’m not some gawping, defenceless critter of the sea; I will not roll over onto my belly in submission and I will go neither quietly nor easily into that watery dark should the end be in ma sights. You’re nought but glorified calamari, and ye DON’T frighten ME!”

The kraken wails and a tentacle slams into me from behind. The air is knocked from ma lungs and I’m pushed painfully up against the pole with the flare. It’s dying now, but still bright enough. Still well hot enough, I can tell you now. I can feel the icy burn of the tentacle’s suckers against my back and through my coat, and I bellow in cathartic cursing as I pull the flare from its position and twist, slamming it deep into the tip of the monster’s arm. It writhes in panic, trying to get away, but I hold it in ma grip, jamming the flare in deeper, smelling the sizzle of its flesh as it peels itself in sharp bursts from the skin of my back, taking a good deal of ma lovely coat along with it.

The flame goes out. The red of the flare. Were it not for the dutiful rotation of my trusty lighthouse I would be plunged into total, suffocating, stormy darkness.

The scorched tentacle retreats, terrified of this sensation unknown, and I watch as one by one they all lower reluctantly back under the safety of the waves, off perhaps in search of an easier meal.

I laugh, then. I laugh loud and clear as I grip tight to the rigging; lightning flashing for a final time as I come upon the door. The lighthouse beam swings round and the Reflection of the golden arch stands tall before me; I cannot tell what is on the other side but I can see that it is open. It’s a curious sensation, I’ll grant.

And I won’t have to wonder for long.

Because, with a last great wave from behind the boat is lifted, I grin from ear to ear, and holding steady, my sea-legs tested to their absolute limits, we sail on, onwards, through the door.