Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

As they progressed further into the trees, the scent of the vegetation on the warm night air became almost hallucinogenic; or perhaps it was simply the effect of the wine. Ruth felt a sense of well-being rise up from her belly; her fingers tingled; the hairs on her neck stood erect.

The sensation took the edge off her profound longing for Church. When she considered it, the sacrifice she had made had been almost physically painful, and the best she could do was to try to keep it out of her mind. That was the most difficult thing of all, for he was always there, on the edge of her thoughts.

The tiny flying figures swooped low, dipping in and out of the branches, following then leading the procession. Every now and then, Ruth thought she glimpsed movement away in the dark, neither beast nor man but something in-between, yet oddly unthreatening.

What is happening here? she asked herself.

Finally they came to a large clearing. Roslyn’s shrouded body was placed in the centre and then the women stripped off their white dresses unselfconsciously. Ruth felt no pressure to join them. She sat back against an olive tree and watched as they played music on an old CD player, and danced and drank and sang. The heady, languorous atmosphere was punctuated by moments of grief when they would start to cry softly, before the dance and the music took them away again on an upward spiral of euphoria.

This is very strange , Ruth thought to herself. I feel as if I’m here and not here at the same time .

The wine went straight to her head, and at some point she fell asleep. When she came round, she felt as if she was still in the throes of a dream. The women were lost to ecstasy, dancing in such a frenzied manner that they no longer appeared to know where they were or who they were. Their whirl reminded Ruth of film she had seen of voodoo rituals, wild limbs, thrashing hair, rolling eyes. They left trails in the air behind them, and in her detached state, Ruth had to accept she was as drunk as the rest of them.

Strangely she found she was lying on a bed of ivy that had not been there before, and when she squinted she thought she could make out snakes of blue fire like the ones she had seen earlier sinuously weaving across the ground.

‘ Come to me.’

The voice was deep and resonant like the call of an animal and she couldn’t tell if it was real or in her head. She pulled herself to her feet and moved into the trees. A shape circled her, and another, and a third, but however much she looked she could only catch impressions, like the flash of a shadow on a summer wall.

Lost in her dream, Ruth hurried through the trees until she eventually stopped and turned, and was confronted by a face that made her black out for an instant. She saw red eyes and fur and horns, but the rest was lost to shadow.

‘Do you know my name?’ it said in the deep, throaty rumble she had heard before.

Ruth tried to see who was talking to her, but every time she focused her head swam. ‘No,’ she replied in a voice that appeared to be coming from somewhere else.

‘I am a lover of peace and a lover of madness. On the boundary between the living and the dead, you will find me. I am of the trees, and of fertility, and of destruction. I was ancient even when the Greeks worshipped me in the grove of Simila, strange and alien to them. In Mycenae, they knew me as DI-WO-NI-SO-JO, and many other names were mine in the time before that time. I am not the oldest thing, but I am one of them.’

‘What do you want with me?’ The god terrified and entranced her at the same time.

‘You are favoured by the oldest things — the mark of my kin is upon you.’ Ruth realised he was talking about the brand of Cernunnos she carried. ‘You have a part to play in the great, unfolding pattern. But first you must give in to the madness and the ecstasy to unleash your hidden self.’

Ruth tried to back away. It felt as if there was a field of electricity around the god that made her heart pound and her anxiety and excitement rise in equal measures.

‘Drink.’

A wine sack was thrust into her hands. Though she fought it, she was unable to resist and when the warm, powerfully intoxicating liquid ran down her throat it felt more like a drug than wine. Her vision fractured; colours shifted, glowing with heat and life; sounds boomed and echoed in unnatural ways. Music swelled around her and she felt instantly aroused.

‘What’s happening to me?’ Her hands went to her belly where a heat was rising.

‘See my little brother? He brings the fear of wild places and the joy of congress.’

Ruth caught sight of a distorted image, goat legs, human torso, animal horns, an erect phallus. ‘The horned one,’ she gasped, recalling her Craft. ‘Pan …’

Another figure slipped by furtively, sleek, seal-skinned, with a dangerous grin and glowing eyes, gone before she could comprehend more.

‘The oldest thing in the land,’ the god growled. ‘We three stand beside and behind you as the pattern unfolds. Know you this, and act accordingly.’

‘What am I supposed to do?’ Ruth asked desperately. ‘I don’t understand any of this!’

The god cocked his head, listening. ‘Too late now!’ he boomed. ‘Great danger approaches. Run. Run!’

Darkness so intense, Veitch could see nothing. Thin air, cold and dusty-dry and filled with the stench of decay. With an effort he overcame the slowly fading paralysis that had infected him since he had been dragged down into the Underworld, and tore off the shroud that was clinging to the lower half of his face.

Tentatively, he felt around. Bones rattled next to him, along with some minor grave goods. Stone was hard against his back, on either side, just above his face. Breathing slowly to remain calm, he realised he was in a box, perhaps a tomb. The sword was still with him — he could feel its dark whispers in his head — but there was not enough room to use it.

‘Miller!’ he called out. Then: ‘Etain?’ There was no response. ‘All right. You’re on your own.’

An image of being buried far underground crashed into his mind and claustrophobia swelled in his chest. ‘Stay calm, you wanker,’ he snarled. He rammed the balls of his fists against the stone over him. The pain reduced the constriction growing in his throat, but there was no movement from the lid of the box. The dull thud told him that there was no space above him, and despair curled in his stomach.

Quickly, he hit out at the four sides. The wall to his left rang hollow. With relief, he felt along the edge and was convinced there was a join: a door of some kind.

Forty minutes later, the stone burst outwards and a thin, icy light leached in. His fists were torn and bloodied and the mess that had been his left elbow protruded from his tattered shirt. But the pain was already lost beneath his fierce determination to get to Ruth before the Libertarian did; the possibility that he might already be too late was instantly rejected.

Letting his eyes grow accustomed to the light, he swung his legs out of the shattered door before a rush of vertigo forced him to grip onto the edge. The ground was at least fifty feet below, at the foot of a wall of coffin-sized tombs that reached another hundred feet above his head. Stretching out before him in the vast cavern was a monumental necropolis of tombs and mausoleums constructed of dull, grey stone or set into the rocky walls, slumbering under an oppressive atmosphere of dust and age and uneasy stillness. Yet for all its enormity, Veitch knew it was only the suburbs of the Grim Lands. What lay beyond this crumbling fringe of the Underworld was a place as immeasurable and unknowable as death.

On the crepuscular limits of the cavern, he could just make out the tunnel that led to those Grey Lands, now sealed by iron gates that reached from floor to roof. No chance of hiding away amongst the vast ranks of the silent dead, who had accepted him in a way he had never wholly experienced in the living world.