The Owl Killers

october

samhain, when the world of the dead and the world of the living draw close enough to touch each other. the night when the past, the present, and the future become one.

fOR THE TENTH TIME THAT AFTERNOON I cursed as the thread once more slipped from the eye of the needle. My linen vestment had ripped and I was trying to repair it. I was not accustomed to sewing. In the Cathedral there had been a whole hall full of people kept constantly employed in making and mending the clergy’s robes. Since I’d come to Ulewic, the girl who cooked for me had mended my clothes, and though her work had been clumsy, it was a hundred times better than anything I could manage. But I’d had to let the girl go. It was one of the many things I’d had to sacrifice since the Commissarius’s visit. But no matter how much I tightened my belt I still could not raise the money I needed.

The Commissarius had received his full measure of tithes. I’d had no choice. If I had defaulted by so much as a clipped farthing, I knew the Commissarius would carry out his threat and I would have found myself in chains in the Bishop’s dungeon within the day. The villagers couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the tithes they owed before the month was up, so I had taken the only way out left open to me. I had pawned the church silver to raise the money.

I knew it was foolish. It would cost me more in the end, but I had to buy myself time. The jewelled chalice, the engraved paten, the silver candlesticks and altar cross were only ever used for the High Masses of Christmas and Easter; the rest of the year we used the plain pewter and brass. The valuable pieces were kept locked away in a great heavy chest in the church vestry and I had the only key. So all I had to do was to redeem them in time for the Christmas Mass and no one would be any the wiser.

All I had to do? It sounded so easy. But if I did not retrieve the church silver by Christmas Eve, D’Acaster would notice at once that it was missing. I had just two months to recover the pieces. Two months and I was no nearer raising the money than when I started.

There was only one person in the world I could confide in and trust. I’d sworn I would never see Hilary again, but I’d said that countless times before. We both knew I didn’t mean it. If I sent word, Hilary would come to me and would get me the money somehow. I deserved that much at least. I had taken the full weight of punishment for what we had done. I had protected Hilary’s identity, even under the most rigorous of questioning. I had never once betrayed my dark angel.

There was a loud hammering at my door and I jerked, dropping the needle again.

“Father! Come quickly. He’s gone! He’s gone!”

“I’m coming,” I called. “There’s no need to break my door down.”

But the yells and banging only redoubled. I groped for the latch. As the door swung wide, I had to leap back to avoid the wildly beating fists. One of the village women stood on the threshold. It took me a moment to recognise her, for her face was streaked with tears and mud.

“It’s Aldith, isn’t it?” I said. “What’s happened? Who’s gone?”

“Oliver, my little Oliver. He’s not there. I went to where… and he wasn’t there!” She broke off in a fit of sobbing, running back and forth in front of my door like a crazed dog.

Several women were beginning to gather on the other side of the path, clutching each other and staring, but not daring to approach, afraid that her madness might be catching.

I seized Aldith by the arm. “Come now, you must calm yourself, Mistress. This won’t do you any good. Oliver’s dead, don’t you remember? I buried him myself three days ago.”

Grief does strange things to a woman. Some refuse to accept that their children or husband are dead. I’d even known women to set a place for the deceased at the table or wash their clothes as if they would return to wear them.

Aldith shook her head violently. “No, Father, you don’t understand-his body… it’s gone… from the grave.”

“What! Are you sure?”

“Grave’s empty, Father. I went to lay some meat and drink on it for All Hallows’, so he’d not feel neglected, but the grave… it was open and his little body was gone.”

She froze, a look of wonderment spreading slowly across her face, then she clutched my arm. “Father, maybe he wasn’t dead after all, or… maybe God heard my prayers and brought him back to life. Three days, Father, three days, don’t you see… I have to go home. He’ll be there waiting for me.”

She hitched up her skirts and began to run.

“Wait!” I called after her. “Aldith, come back. It is not possible. He can’t…” But she only ran faster.

I snatched up my cloak and hurried down towards the churchyard.

Oliver had been just five years old, and when he had first fallen ill, it seemed nothing unusual, a sore throat, a slight fever, some vomiting. It was a touch of ague, his mother had said, brought on by the cold weather. But two days later, little Oliver was writhing in agony, his belly swollen up as if he had the dropsy, and he was vomiting blood. Death had followed within the week.

We had laid the child’s body straight into the half-frozen earth, wrapped only in a simple winding sheet. His mother couldn’t afford a coffin; it was all she could do to raise the money for the soul-scot. I’d thrown earth onto the small body, and watched the villagers add their own clods, while the mother howled and rocked in the arms of her neighbours. Then the grave had been filled in.

I had seen it myself only yesterday, a slender mound of earth, fresh and dark against the surrounding grass and marked with a small wooden cross. What could Aldith have possibly seen to make her doubt her son was in there? The poor woman had been deranged by grief. She must surely have gone to the wrong grave.

As I hurried towards the church I could see a group of men standing in the doorway under the obscene carving of the naked old hag, which the villagers call Black Anu. Martin the sexton, the blacksmith John, and two other villagers were deep in conversation. They stopped talking and nudged one another as I approached, as if they’d been discussing me.

“Martin, Mistress Aldith has just come to me with some tale about her son’s grave. She told me…” I felt foolish even saying it, “… that it has been disturbed. There is no truth in this, I take it.”

“Grave’s empty,” Martin said tersely.

“Show me,” I demanded.

The men glanced at one another.

“Your memory going, is it, Father?” The sexton coughed and spat a gob of phlegm onto the church step. “You know where the grave is, Father; you buried the lad in it.”

“I can still remember who pays your wages. This churchyard is your responsibility. Your job is to ensure that the dead are allowed to rest in peace. So if you’ve been negligent in carrying out your duties, I want to see.”

Martin at least had the grace to look uncomfortable. With another glance at his companions, he led the four of us reluctantly around the side of the church.

The grave was tucked away beneath an overhanging oak in the far corner of the churchyard. It had not been dug deep; the sexton had complained that tree roots and icy ground had made it hard to go down as far as usual, though I suspected it was because Aldith hadn’t given the man an extra coin, which he seemed to expect as his right.

Even as we approached I saw that the earth was not heaped over the grave as it should have been, but piled on either side of it. I stared down into the narrow pit. The outline in the wet earth where the small body had lain was plainly visible, but the body itself had vanished.

An icy shiver crawled up my back. Could Oliver have risen as Aldith said, not as our Lord rose, but as one of the revenant dead, the corpses which clamber from their graves and feast on the living? I crossed myself. “God have mercy on us,” I murmured.

There’d been such a case when I lived in Norwich. A man, newly buried, had risen from the churchyard and wandered through the streets throttling anyone he encountered. He had been followed by a pack of yellow-eyed cats whose savage yowling terrified all who heard them. In the end Bishop Salmon had commanded the grave be opened and the head of the corpse cut off with the spade that had been used to bury him. When they dug the dead man up, they’d found his corpse as fat and bloated as a leech and when they severed his head, a great scarlet spurt had gushed from his neck until the grave was filled with blood.

Was it possible this boy too had become a revenant? He’d had the simplest of burials, it was true enough, but I had been diligent in giving him all due rites of the Holy Church. And the sins of a child that young could surely not have been as grievous as to make him unworthy of a Christian burial.

“Do you think…” I stammered. “Is it…is it possible that the corpse has walked?”

The sexton coughed again and spat into the dark hole. “He’d not be able to leave his grave. I made sure of that myself. I opened it up after his mam had left and hammered iron nails into the soles of the lad’s feet, so he couldn’t walk.”

I didn’t know whether I was relieved or angry. “You violated a grave after he’d been given a Christian burial?”

Martin shrugged. “That weren’t the ague that killed him. Bairn died from witchcraft, plain as day. Crosses and holy water wouldn’t be enough to hold him in the grave, not if he was killed by witchery.”

The other men nodded.

Blacksmith John exchanged a look with the sexton, then cleared his throat. “Thing is, Father, if the corpse didn’t clamber out of the grave by itself, then someone must have taken it.”

I gaped at him. “But why? Who could possibly want to steal a corpse?”

John scratched at a scab on his huge muscular arm. “The way I see it, Father, is the one who killed him is the one that’s taken his corpse. Why else would she want to put the evil eye on a little lad? She needed his body for her black arts.”

“She? You think a woman in Ulewic, one of my own flock, would-”

John gave a great mirthless bellow of laughter. “She’s not one of your flock, Father. That old witch would never set foot in a church. Her soul’s so black, if one drop of holy water was to touch her withered old hide, she’d likely burn to ashes on the spot.”

“Old Gwenith, he means.” Martin explained. “She never sets foot in the village in daylight, except for the fairs and then only when she’s something to buy or sell. But at night…” He glanced at the other men. “At night it’s a different story, that’s when she comes down from her lair to make mischief.” There were murmurs of agreement from the others.

John stared down again at the tiny grave. “A bairn as small as Oliver would be light enough even for an old woman to carry away with her. Happen that’s why she chose him as her victim. And you know what Eve it is tonight, Father.”

I nodded grimly. I knew only too well. It was the night the Church prayed for the souls of the dead, but I knew that others in the village would not have their minds on the rites of the Church, but on the heathen practices of the feast they called Samhain. Aldith had already told me she had come to lay food and drink on the grave. The other villagers would do the same for their dead, however much I preached against it. But that was not all. This was the night when the witches did their worst. God alone knew what this Gwenith intended with the body of that poor child, but whatever devilish rites she was bent on, I swore I would put a stop to her mischief, even if I had to fight the hordes of Hell to do it.

“You say this Gwenith lives somewhere beyond the village. Can you take me there?”

The four men as one took a step backwards.

“No, Father, you’ll not catch me going up there.” John held up his great broad hands as if to ward off the very suggestion. “Only a man in Holy Orders, like yourself, would dare set foot near the cottage without fear of her hex. But you know the Latin words and holy prayers to defend yourself.”

“Besides, you’ll not need us to guide you,” Martin grunted. “River’ll take you to her. Follow the river upstream. They say her cottage is right by the water’s edge, near the top of the hill. You’ll not mistake it.”

“You will go, Father, for the sake of the village?” John asked.

I found my mouth was so dry I could not answer him. In my anger, I’d sworn to myself that I’d fight the demons of Hell to stop the witch. It was easy enough to swear, but as it hit me that I might actually have to do it, I felt as if I’d been doused in iced water. If these strapping men were too terrified of her even to show me the way to her cottage, what kind of satanic powers could this fiend conjure?

I’d watched men who were trained in such matters perform exorcisms and unmask sorcerers. I’d heard the howls and screams of the possessed, seen objects fly about the room and great black streams of filth burst from their mouths. But the exorcists had done their work surrounded by clergy and holy symbols. I couldn’t do it alone and unprotected. No one could expect me to… I needed books, holy relics… I couldn’t do it… I wouldn’t-

“It’ll be a long walk and a steep climb. You must hurry if you want to get there before she’s time to do her worst. If she conjures up the Evil One…” John crossed himself.

The blacksmith was right; there wasn’t time to send for help. If I didn’t stop her, then God alone knew what the hag would unleash on these defenceless people. I was a priest. I had the power of God on my side. She was merely a woman, an ignorant old woman; she could not stand against the power of the Holy Church.

In a daze, I found myself nodding. The men glanced at one another, relief washing over their faces.

“God go with you, Father.”

IT WAS A LONGER AND STEEPER CLIMB even than I had anticipated. I was forced to stop many times to catch my breath, although I dared not linger until I had fully recovered, for the sun had already disappeared behind the hill. Only a grey ghost light still hovered in the sky, the last whisper of the sun’s dying rays.

The tiny bubble of confidence I’d felt down in the churchyard had long since burst. With each step the pain in my chest grew worse. What would I find if I did reach her cottage? Suppose she had already summoned up the hounds of Satan, how would I fight them alone? I glanced fearfully up at the black rocks rising like devils’ horns around me. My body was drenched in cold sweat. Only the knowledge of what evil she might be preparing to do with the body of an innocent child prevented me from fleeing back the way I’d come. I couldn’t face the villagers and tell them I’d failed. God knows they had little enough respect for me as it was.

Now the path was nothing more than a sheep’s track strewn with stones and rocks. It was so perilously narrow in places that several times I lost my footing and came close to plunging into the raging river below. I cursed myself for having neglected to bring a lantern. How could I have been so foolish as to embark on such a climb without any means of lighting my way? Maybe I’d already passed the cottage in the gloom. Surely not even a witch could find anywhere to nest among these rocks. The path vanished beneath my feet and I found myself walking over a flat stretch of grass. The rocks and the hillside rose all around me like the walls of a fortress, blocking what little light remained in the sky.

Then out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something moving in the darkness. I turned. A human skull was hanging upside down, suspended in midair. As I stared aghast, the hollow eye sockets suddenly blazed with flame. I screamed and staggered backwards, slipping and crashing down with such force that I rolled over. The ground disappeared from beneath my head and shoulders.

I had tumbled right to the edge of the bank. I was lying on my back, suspended over the river. I felt the icy spray on my neck and heard the deafening roar of the water crashing over the rocks below. I flailed about, trying to find a handhold on the bank to pull myself back, but the grass I clutched at came away in my hands and I found myself slipping further over the river.

Then I felt someone grasp my arm. I clung to the outstretched hand and inched myself back on the bank until I was crouching on all fours on the solid earth, gasping, my limbs shaking beneath me. I raised my head. I was staring into the stinking, filthy skirts of a woman. I scrambled to my feet. The old witch was standing in front of me, holding the skull with its blazing eyes. Now that I was close to it, I could see that inside the upturned skull was a mound of burning tinder. Red and orange flames licked around the yellowed teeth.

I dared not move for fear I would step backwards into the river. Every word, every prayer that should have protected me, had vanished from my head. I pulled my iron crucifix from about my neck and grasping it tightly in my fist pushed it towards her face.

“Get away from me. I… I am a priest. God will protect me.”

The old hag cackled with laughter. “Wasn’t God that saved you from a wetting.”

“What evil do you intend this night, old woman? I warn you, whatever mischief you plan, I am here to prevent it.”

“So you’ve come to stop me kindling my hearth fire, have you? Seems a lot of trouble to go to, to stop a poor old soul cooking her supper.”

“Don’t lie to me, woman,” I shouted. “The only fire you are lighting is to brew some deadly potion. What wickedness do you intend to make with that?” I pointed at the skull but, to my shame, I saw my hand was trembling.

The old woman chuckled. “Don’t you know all fires must be doused on Samhain, and lit again from the need-flame to see us safe through the dark winter?” She held up the fire-filled skull. “You’re a priest. You’re not afeared of dead things, are you? What harm can a bit of old bone do to you?”

The flames danced in the sightless eyes. I couldn’t tear my gaze from them. I felt as if I was being pulled closer to the old woman and yet neither of us was moving. Such a small skull, it could almost be small enough to be a child’s. I squeezed my eyes shut. Saint Michael and all angels defend me!

“That’s the head of the little boy, isn’t it? That’s Oliver… What have you done, you foul hag? Where’s the rest of the corpse? The flesh, how did you remove the flesh so quickly; he’s only three days dead?” A wave of nausea flooded up from my stomach. “God in Heaven, did you boil and eat… You did, didn’t you? Tell me the truth, you demon, tell me what you did to that child!”

I leapt forward, swinging the iron cross hard at her evil face. It caught her across the cheek and she fell backwards. The skull rolled down her legs, spilling the burning tinder. In an instant, her skirts were on fire.

Horrified, I stood and stared as flames shot upwards into the dark. The witch was writhing on the grass, screaming and pleading for me to help her. But I couldn’t move. I was mesmerised by the yellow flames. With a desperate effort she rocked onto her belly trying to smother the fire beneath her own body. A lifetime seemed to pass while I stood transfixed as the old woman rolled on the ground, beating at the flames licking around the dark outline of her body, then finally they were gone and we were in darkness.

The old woman lay still. I thought she was dead, but then I heard her moan. I collapsed onto my knees and pushed her over onto her back. The stench of burning cloth hung in the air. In the darkness I could see little of what the fire had done to her, but I saw the glittering of her open eyes as she stared up at me.

“God did this to you, Gwenith, because you lied. God struck you down with fire for your foul deeds. You were screaming when you felt the heat and pain of those flames. Imagine how much more you will scream when you are burning for all eternity in fire that is a thousand times hotter than any fire on earth.”

I was still gripping the iron cross. I ground it against her mouth, forcing her lips to touch it in the semblance of a kiss. “If you lie now you damn your soul to Hell. If you speak the truth, I will pray that you may be spared a little of the suffering that is about to fall on you. Now, Gwenith, I charge you to tell me what you did with the child you stole from the grave. Show me where I may find his body or at least his bones, so that I may return them to his grieving mother. If you do not I shall see you hanged and I shall send your maleficent soul straight to Hell.”

“A bairn’s… been taken… from a grave?” she gasped.

“You know that, you fiend. You took him. This is his skull.”

“No, no…” She shook her head. “That is my daughter’s skull… Gudrun’s mother… it’s my daughter who brings the need-fire to us… I loved my daughter… I keep her with us… I’d not leave her in a cold grave all alone…”

“You are lying,” I shouted at her.

“Pick up… the skull… Feel it. Those aren’t the teeth of a bairn…” She gripped the front of my robe with a surprising strength. “The bairn’s corpse, you mustn’t let them use it… Three generations ago, five cunning women joined their powers to send the creature back into the twilight time. My great-grandam was one… They thought no man would ever have the knowledge to conjure him again… But Aodh braved the bull oak and the hide… Aodh has the knowledge… Now he has the boy… He means to bring the creature back… I’m the only cunning woman left. Can’t fight him alone… I hoped the grey women… but there is not enough time. Only one way to stop the Owl Masters now. You must go back to Ulewic and get the bairn’s corpse afore they can use it…” She groaned. Her grip momentarily tightened, then slackened as she fell back.

I shook her. “What is this creature? What will it do? Tell me!” “Go… hurry. If you want to prevent evil this night… stop the Owl Masters afore it’s too late.”

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN EASIER going down the river path than up it, but it wasn’t. The moon had risen, but the light that it cast deceived the eye. Shadows masked holes. Rocks which looked solid rolled away beneath the feet. Only the moonlight shining on the tumbling white foam of the river differentiated between ground and water. I knew I should slow down. Several times I slipped and had to clutch at bushes and rocks to stop myself falling right down the hill. My back and arms were bruised and smarting, but all I could think of was what the Owl Masters were even now doing down in that village.

How could I have been so stupid as to let myself be tricked into coming up here? I should have known that there was something odd about the men’s story. The sexton must have noticed the grave had been opened long before Oliver’s mother found it in the afternoon. Why had he not come to me straightaway to tell me about the grave? Had Phillip D’Acaster instructed the sexton to send me on a fool’s errand, just to get me out of the way? Or did the men really believe that old Gwenith had stolen the corpse?

I heard the hounds howling long before I reached the first of the cottages. All the flea-bitten curs in Ulewic seemed to be joining in. But the streets themselves were deserted. Chinks of light escaping through cracks in shutters showed that not all the villagers had gone to the Samhain fires. Women and children were doubtless cowering behind those closed doors, terrified of the dead or of the Owl Masters. But despite the chill of the night, no smoke rose from any cottages. As old Gwenith had said, all the hearth fires had been extinguished. They would not be lit again until the men came home bearing flames from the Samhain fire.

But something was burning in the village; I could smell the wood smoke on the air, and as I rounded the corner I saw it: A crackling bonfire had been lit right in the centre of the graveyard, in front of the very church itself. Scarlet and orange flames were twisting into the night sky. Showers of red sparks burst around it, as the wood crackled and spat.

A large group of villagers, men and women, had encircled the blaze and were dancing round it, their hands linked and arms raised. Their feet stomped in a slow heavy rhythm to the beat of a drum. Some of the dancers were dressed in long white shifts, their faces masked by wooden carvings of human faces or shrouded with white cloth in which holes had been cut for eyes and mouths-crude imitations of the dead, come back to dance among the living.

The drummer sat cross-legged on top of one of the D’Acaster family tombs. He was naked save for a deerskin wrapped round his loins. On his head he wore the skull of a stag. The sharp antlers gleamed white and the drummer’s bare skin was bronzed with sweat in the firelight.

I tore through the church gate, hardly able to contain my anger, shouting at the villagers to stop, but no one took any notice. The dancers’ heads were thrown back, their eyes closed, as they surrendered themselves to the beat of the drum. I was beside myself with rage. How dare they perform this heathen rite on holy ground, right before the door of the church, trampling over the graves, making a mockery of those Christian remains which lay beneath their filthy feet?

I strode towards the dancers and seized a stout, matronly looking woman by her arm.

“Cease this godless spectacle at once!” I ordered.

But she flung me off with such force that I bounced on the ground and lay there winded and gasping. Shocked by her strength, I stared up and realised that she wasn’t a woman at all. Those dancers I had taken to be village women were all men. There were no women in the graveyard.

Any attempt to break up the dance would be futile. The men had been drinking and were too carried away by the rhythm of the drum to pay any attention to me. They could wait. I would deal with their sins in the confessional. The important thing now was to find little Oliver’s body.

I struggled painfully to my feet. If Gwenith was right and they intended to use the corpse in some dark rite, it must be somewhere close by. Then I saw them. Four masked Owl Masters stood in the doorway of the church, beneath the carved Black Anu, blocking the entrance to St. Michael’s, as if they were guarding something. They had put the body in the church. Maybe the rest of the Owl Masters were inside, already committing their foul deeds upon the corpse. Perhaps they were performing their rites upon the very altar itself.

I ran round the circle of dancers towards the church door where the Owl Masters stood guard. The flames of the Samhain fire glinted red on the bronze beaks of their masks and on the drawn short-swords in their hands.

“Out of my way!” I tried to push past them, but two of the blades flashed upwards and were at my throat before I could take a step.

“How dare you threaten me; I am your priest. I could have you flogged for this.”

But the Owl Masters didn’t move. Deep behind the masks I glimpsed the flicker of eyes watching me.

“What is going on in the church? This is the house of God. If you violate a sacred building, God will smite you down and damn you for all eternity.”

I fumbled for the cross about my neck and held it up in front of their faces. “I command you in the name of…”

I sensed someone behind me and in the same instant saw one of the Owl Masters gesture with his sword. I half turned, but too late to prevent myself being seized on either side by powerful hands and dragged towards the dancers.

“How dare you lay hands on a priest! I will have you arrested for this.”

But the men only laughed. They knew the threat was an empty one. They had my arms pinioned behind my back. How could I punish them when I couldn’t even identify them, for they were both dressed in white shrouds, their faces concealed behind grinning wooden masks and hair of straw.

“You must join the dance, Father,” one of them said. “Else the dead will think you don’t welcome them.”

“Let me go,” I yelled, struggling to get out of their grip, but it was no use. I found myself pushed and pulled round the circle with the other dancers. A priest’s strength is no match for burly villagers, strong as oxen from years of labouring in the fields.

Ducking under the upraised dancers’ arms, an Owl Master entered the ring and strode across to the fire in the centre. He was holding a straw figure in his arms, about the size of a child. The straw figure was more than large enough to contain the corpse of little Oliver. They meant to destroy it, burn it to ashes. And without a body what hope was there of resurrection for the boy on the Day of Judgement?

“No! No!” I screamed. “Not an innocent child.”

The Owl Master turned his head in my direction, raising the straw figure high in his arms, as if delibrately taunting me, then he tossed the effigy into the flames. The straw smouldered and burst into flames. An unpleasant, pungent stench began to mingle with the wood smoke, heavy and soporific. But it was not the smell of flesh. Some herb or leaves must have been stuffed inside the straw figure, something that was sending up clouds of dense smoke.

I felt light-headed, almost dizzy. I found that I had ceased to struggle. I no longer had the will to do so. The beat of the drum grew louder, until it seemed to be coming from inside my head. I found my feet obeying its rhythm, stamping with all the other feet; it was impossible to do otherwise.

Shapes moved between the dancers and the fire. They were insubstantial at first, so blurred that I thought what I could see were our own shadows, but they couldn’t be. Across the far side of the circle I could see the shadows of the dancers on the ground, cast by the firelight, but the shadows were behind the dancers and moving with them. We were circling like the sun, towards the right, but whatever was in the centre of our ring was moving in the opposite direction, against the sun. I shook my head, trying desperately to draw in the night air and clear my brain, but my thoughts only became more fuddled. Then the shapes began to solidify.

They were not shadows moving in the circle. They were people. Barefoot girls with thick ropes about their necks were dancing with ancient men, whose beards hung grey to their gnarled feet. Old women with cobweb veils moved stiffly beside pale young men with bloodstained shirts. Old crones, their twisted nails gleaming yellow as old bones in the moonlight, grasped the hands of children with sunken black hollows where their eyes should have been. They lifted their hands as they circled the fire, and all their fingers were webbed. More and more of them joined the circle, rising up from the ground, slipping out from between the branches of the yew trees, slithering from between the cracks in the stone tombs. The dead of Ulewic were being called back.

The flames of the fire rose higher, red and yellow snakes striking at the stars. The drum beat quickened. The stamping grew louder. We were circling faster and faster, until the faces of the dancers opposite were a blur of mouths and eyes. I clung to the hands that were holding me in the dance. My fingers were locked rigid; I could not let go.

There was a huge bang and a flash of blinding light. The circle broke. Men were falling and stumbling, knocking into one another. For a moment I was blinded; the flash was seared onto my eyeballs. Then the villagers began pointing up at the round tower of the church. Blinking hard, I gazed upwards too.

One of the Owl Masters was standing on the flat roof of the tower, silhouetted black against the moon and stars. His long cloak swirled out about him in the breeze. He stretched out his hands over the churchyard, holding what looked like a rolled piece of white cloth. He raised the bundle in his hands, high above his head.

“Through blood we renew our strength. Through death we renew our life. Through destruction we renew creation. Through fire we make all things fertile.”

“Through fire we make all things fertile,” the villagers echoed in the churchyard below.

On the top of the tower the Owl Master’s cloak billowed up behind like wings. “I call upon Cernunnos to give him spirit. Triple Goddess, Blodeuwedd the virgin, Anu the mother, Morrigu the hag, I call upon you to give him substance. Taranis lord of destruction, Yandil lord of darkness, Rantipole lord of rage, I call upon you to awaken the Owlman! Awaken the Owlman! Awaken the Owlman! Ka!”

The Owl Master let the pale cloth he was holding unfurl in the wind. I could just make out two vertical lines, written on it in crimson, on which were many horizontal slashes and marks. Above the lines a circle was divided into four, and below the lines, a triple spiral. I could make no sense of what I saw. I heard people crying out in fear. I thought it was the marks on the cloth that they were afraid of. Then with mounting horror, I realised it was not the bloodred marks; it was what they were inscribed upon. That was not a cloth the Owl Master held in his hands, but a flayed skin, a human skin, the size and shape of a small child.

I’d scarcely had time to register what I was seeing when a new cry went up from the crowd of villagers. A trickle of smoke was coming from the church door. For a moment I thought they’d set the church on fire, but then I realised it was not coming from the inside of the church itself. Smoke was writhing out from the gaping cunt of the old hag carved above the door.

At first the smoke was white but as more and more poured out in a steady stream it began to turn black. Now it was taking shape-the head of a monstrous bird, then huge wings as wide as the church tower. The thing rose in the night air, hovering above the church. Even as we watched, it was swelling, becoming denser and darker, blotting out the stars.

The villagers, standing mesmerised, now began to scream and flee. Everywhere men scrambled to get out of the churchyard, throwing themselves over the walls, not caring where they landed or how, in a frenzy to get as far away from the demon as they could. As if their screams had broken the spell which had transfixed me to the spot, I found myself stumbling and running towards the gate.

I did not look back.