Things ARE What They Used to Be
Leith Edinburgh, two miles from Arthur’s Seat
Enzo Martin’s nickname was Weasel, he thought they called him that affectionately because of his sneakily sly nature, but it was really because, being short and skinny with a snub nose, light brown hair and beard he could almost pass for one at a distance and in a dim light, not that anyone was ever foolish enough to say that to his face.
He’d just been released from Edinburgh’s Saughton prison after serving a five-year sentence for dealing class A drugs. Bad as that was, it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever done, just the worst they could prove. He knew things would have changed since he’d been gone, but he couldn’t possibly have guessed how drastic the changes were.
The ancient port of Leith was on the periphery of what official press releases called the “Infection Zone” and with no public transport or taxis available (after the locals set the ones that drove into the area on fire with the drivers and any passengers still inside) he had to walk the last part of his journey, slipping through the police cordon as they expanded it to cover the area.
Since his parents and their parents before them, all the way back, were Spaniards, he felt nothing as he walked into the limits of Morrigan’s reach and looked around shocked at the scenes of carnage that met his eyes: burnt-out vehicles, filled with charred bodies, littered the road, with home electronics piled-up in the gutter and smashed to pieces after unsuccessful attempts to destroy them by fire.
Looted shops were graffitied with Morrigan’s name as the corpses of disbelievers, including anyone caught using or selling technology, hung by their necks from broken street lamps up and down the pavement, as birds of prey ripped at their rotting flesh.
It was getting dark, and the streets were uncharacteristically deserted when he saw James “Fergie” Ferguson walk out of a close furtively, hands deep in his pockets, he was a scary looking man in his late twenties who Enzo had gone to school with.
“Fergie!” Enzo shouted excitedly, lighting up at the sight of a familiar face.
Despite his big build and impressive stature Fergie was visibly scared of the smaller man, he unconsciously fingered the scar on his cheek as he remembered Enzo’s violent temper combined with his frightening speed and skill with a blade.
They were both dressed in the usual criminal apparel, tracksuits: clothing with deep pockets that didn’t look suspicious when running away from the scene of a crime.
“Christ, man,” Enzo said, “what happened here?”
“Don’t say that,” Fergie whispered, looking around nervously at the closed curtains and empty streets.
“Don’t say what?”
“Christianity is a lie, Weasel, there is only one true goddess, so what you just said was heresy,” Fergie said, frightened to confront him, but more fearful of her terrible power that clawed at the back of his brain not to.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You did it again, and you never know who’s listening,” he said, panicking, “Let’s go back to my place, I was on my way home anyway and I’ve got plenty of bevvy in.”
Fergie’s place was a two-bedroom flat on the third floor of a Victorian tenement building. It was a gift from his father, who was also a crook, only one in a higher tax bracket (not that he ever paid taxes).
“I didn’t know you were getting out today,” Fergie said, as he checked the knives, forks and spoons were still under the doormat after he’d finished lighting the candles and oil lamps dotted around the room.
“What’s going on here?” Enzo said, as he watched him wide eyed.
“I’ll explain in a minute, but I need a stiff drink first,” Fergie said, pouring whisky into two shot glasses and setting down the bottle on the table in front of them as he joined Enzo in sitting on the brown, leather settee.
“What happened to all your stuff?” he said, looking around as his eyes became accustomed to the subdued lighting. The last time he’d been there it had been with filled DVDs, games consoles and a big screen TV, now all that remained was the settee and an armchair in the middle of the room with looted cases of beer, spirits, cigarettes and cigars stacked up against the walls. Everything Fergie had ever gotten had been stolen, by him or someone else, so at least that was one thing that hadn’t changed, Enzo thought, and he found comfort in that.
“You really don’t feel it?” Fergie said, tapping the base of his skull as the urge to go to Morrigan grew gradually stronger by the hour. His hand was shaking as he refilled his glass after downing the contents in one swallow, shuddering at the result. He’d been the second in command of their gang, and was very much the beta to Enzo’s alpha male, but there were now worse things close by to be more afraid of than him, things that could rip your soul out and torture it for all eternity.
“Feel what?”
“It’s in the back of my head, like an itch I can’t reach to scratch. It wants me to go to her and it’s filling my brain until one day soon there’ll be no room left for me.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re rabbiting on about, go to who? What’s going on out there?”
After another swallow and a grimace Fergie continued, “Yesterday most of us woke up knowing that a goddess who’d slept for a thousand years inside a volcano was awake, so magick had to be real, there were those who felt nothing and they’re hanging from lampposts because they said so, so if you don’t feel it, don’t say anything.”
“What are you going on about?” Enzo said, pouring them a whisky each.
“The thing is, Weasel,” Fergie said getting drunk, just not drunk enough, “That there are all sorts of supernatural monsters out there, lurking in the shadows right now, and the metal under the doormat keeps them from crossing the threshold, don’t ask me how I know that, I just do.
“Fighting fairy tales with cutlery, are you taking the piss or just plain crazy?”
“I really hope I’m crazy, because if I am then they can cure me and one day all of this’ll just seem like a bad dream. I saw a fairy out of my bedroom window last night and the worst part is, even though it’s been less than two days, I can’t remember a time when that wasn’t normal.”
After several more hours of drunken meanderings a fairy tale reality seemed less important than arguing over the best fantasy football team ever, or how long it takes a giraffe to swallow, then passing out for the night settled all arguments.
It was late afternoon before they surfaced again, nursing hangovers as they wandered down to Leith Links, the birthplace of modern golf and former plague pit. The fare that had sprung up on the grass, early on that Saturday morning, was the kind that hadn't been seen since the seventeen hundreds.
Dozens of market stalls displayed signs boasting of homemade cures, ointments and embrocations, there were also tables full of paintings and figurines of Morrigan, varied in appearance and all woefully inaccurate, as none of them had ever seen her.
In tents, around the boundary fake psychics and fortune tellers touted their versions of a glorious future serving Morrigan, as other frauds offered aphrodisiacs, love potions and magick spells to make their customers wealthy, no-one seemed to question why anyone in possession of the latter would have to make money by selling it, rather than using it for its intended purpose.
With a superstitious fear of banks, and their computerised bookkeeping, money became worthless and barter was suddenly back in fashion, not that it mattered to Enzo who walked around picking up anything he fancied, waving a meat cleaver in the face of anyone who argued about it.
He loved it now that the police, having ripped off any modern insignia on their uniforms, were only interested in enforcing the one, true law: don’t piss Morrigan off, a law that included murdering anyone who questioned her existence, including their non-Celtic colleagues.
As the setting sun cast a red shadow over the park, the stall holders started packing up to get home before dark, which was the domain of the preternatural.
“Let’s go, Weasel,” Fergie said anxiously after Enzo showed no sign of moving.
“You go on, I’ll be back later,” he said, wandering around the last of the open stalls holding a couple of oil lamps and a few dirty books.
“You need to come now, it’s too dangerous,” Fergie said, tugging at the smaller man’s sleeve.
“I’m still your boss and don’t you forget it,” Enzo said, spinning around and brandishing the meat cleaver menacingly, “I’ll come back when I’m ready, and not a second sooner.”
“Fine, have it your way, may Morrigan take you for her own,” he said, finishing with what was becoming the standard way of closing a conversation, saying it loudly enough for the police who were looking on, wondering what the fuss was all about, to accept him as a true believer.
The creature that came out once the darkness was complete was known as the Cù-sìth. It took the shape of a Rottweiler with a longer tail and was the size of a Shetland pony. Its dark-green, shaggy hair plaited in braids as thick as a ship’s hawser with its long, prehensile tail looking the same. Before you ask, no, I don’t know who styled its hair, but feel free to get close enough to ask it.
It looked like something out of everybody’s worst nightmare, which, in a way, it was. It was the harbinger of death, a very specific kind of grim reaper, only it didn’t wait for its prey to die of natural causes. Those who were in its domain after dark were hunted down and judged: it would let the good go with a snort of disappointment and drag the bad back to the hellish fires of Otherworld, the Celtic version of Heaven and Hell combined.
The beast threw its head back and let out three howls, leaving a second’s gap in-between. It was a deep and baleful sound; the noise travelled for miles and every person of Celtic descent who heard it knew what it meant and shook with fear as they cowered behind their thresholds guarded by cold iron, or ran home at full-tilt, if they weren’t there already. It was the fair warning that the Cù-sìth was bound to give by the laws of Otherworld, intended to allow nursing mothers to flee to safety, or be judged like everyone else caught in the open.
The last time the creature had prowled the streets of Leith the Victorian tenements hadn’t been there and, as it sniffed the air, many of the smells of the modern world were unknown to it, but amongst the few people, who might be good or bad, hurrying home, the stench of a rotting soul in the open was all too familiar. It salivated in anticipation of the chase to come; the saliva dripping from its jaws, burning a hole in the road at its feet.
Enzo was leaving the park when he heard the howling, although it was echoing around the buildings, so he couldn’t tell what direction it was coming from. As a non-Celt, he had no idea what it meant, but it sounded so big and scary that the caveman part of his brain told him to run from it as fast as he could, before he got eaten.
And run he did, pounding over the grass, through a thicket of trees, across the deserted road and up a side street, between rows of burnt-out cars. Salty sweat stung his eyes, blinding him for a second as he ran straight into a washing machine that looked like someone had attacked it with a sledgehammer after dumping it in the middle of the road.
Yelping in pain, he fell to the ground, magazines slipping from his grasp, the pages filled with pictures of naked women fluttering in the evening breeze. The clatter of metal and smashing of glass as the oil lamps hit the road sounding insanely loud to his ears.
He paused for a second to rub his leg then stood back up and taking the meat cleaver in a white-knuckle grip, sprinted away as the sound of the Cù-sìth’s approach seemed to come from all directions at once.
Looking for somewhere to hide he ran to an old, tenement building, “Knives and forks under the doormat ain’t gonna stop me,” he muttered, as he kicked at the old, maroon, front door. Although he was right about that, the heavy-duty wood did a good enough job on its own, not even budging under his frenzied assault.
As the sound of the hellhound got louder and closer, he started to run again. Even as his heart pounded loudly in his ears and fire seem to fill his lungs, he felt elated, another side street was just up ahead, and that led to waste land he could cut across to come out close to Fergie’s home.
He bounced off a wall as he turned left into the cul-de-sac he was looking for, grunting in pain at the blow. He could hear the Cù-sìth getting closer, the sound now coming from directly behind him. “Just a bit longer,” he gasped out loud to his failing legs as he stumbled into an opening on his right.
He stopped dead, terror etched on his face when he saw it. Five years ago––before they’d locked him up––there had been a piece of permanently muddy grass in front of where he stood, but now it was occupied by a steel and glass office building, with no way through.
As he stared at it in disbelief he heard a long low growl coming from behind him, making his hackles rise and sending a shiver down his spine. He turned slowly, dreading facing what he knew was there. The Cù-sìth stood ready to spring, the road at its feet smoking as acid drool dripped from its open jaws. When it spoke, it was with a male voice that combined the weariness of age with the eagerness of youth.
“Enzo Martin, thou art to be judged and with a soul as black as thine ’twill not be an arduous task.”
“Yeah? Well, I hear your kind run scared of spoons, so judge this!” he shouted, gathering the last of his strength and charging, the cleaver held high above his head. The prehensile, braided tail whipped around, slamming into his ribs, throwing him sideways. As he lay bleeding and stunned, the tail picked the hatchet carefully up by the wooden handle and flung it backwards, to clatter on the road behind it.
As Enzo rolled onto his back, it placed a huge paw on his chest, not hard enough to hurt him but enough to hold him firmly in place.
“Enzo Martin thou art one who hath spent a lifetime taking what thou wert too indolent to earn by wit or work.”
“Fuck you!” He screamed, struggling futilely to get free.
“Thou hast been judged and I findeth thee lacking,” it said, gradually bringing its full weight to bear. In the nearby flats parents huddled in corners covering their children’s ears, trying to shield them from the horrific screams outside. Then there was a loud crack of a shattering rib cage, and silence fell once more.