CHAPTER SIXTY

Roslin, Scotland  1650

 

The cat, tail erect, whiskers twitching and eyes focused on the pathway to the forest beyond, padded its silent way through the Sinclair graveyard almost within sight of the chapel. Once again, surprisingly, the cat ignored small nocturnal woodland creatures, usually relegated to prey, instead making a beeline for the descending route, passing a cairn marking the convergence of three paths, one running back up toward the chapel, the second meandering eastward through woodland to the Sinclair castle, the third, the one guiding the cat, twisting its way down toward the gurgling sound of the river North Esk.

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Tam McAndrew had been predictably forthcoming with the location he’d been overheard describing in the tavern – not that he’d have readily spilled the beans to the black witch of Troon had she asked him the question in the street or from within the safety of his local public house. When, however, a young man is at first bound helpless by a malevolent enchantment then is trussed to a stout oak chair following which, a selection of hideous tortures are visited upon his person in the most vulnerable of private places, loquaciousness becomes the stock-in-trade feature of the victim. Such was the case with Tam McAndrew, left eventually wandering feverishly through the woods of Troon, partially naked, bleeding from a range of cruel puncture wounds and without the benefit of eyes or tongue with which to recount his ordeal to anyone who might have had a yearning to ask.

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Armed with this information, Agnes, the cat, wended her way toward the perceived location of the portal just south of the natural river cutting where the North Esk turned back on itself and a small cave could be found on the face of the cliff.

She noticed the chapel and castle had been warded against the forces of darkness, the warding signatures visible to feline eyes in the form of irridescent green auroras against the horizon, radiating out from the buildings themselves in wafting oversized fascimiles of the base structures like some form of illuminated weatherproof cover. But she had no interest in the domesticity or worshipful nature of the Sinclairs or their vassals other than perhaps to furnish her with a suit of clothes. Tonight was reserved exclusively for dimensional transformation – the moving through the veils between worlds.

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The small vial tied to her neck bobbed animatedly as she negotiated the steep sides of the cutting, leaping between rocks and boulders until she alighted on a small grassy-edged beach on the riverbank. Up and to her right was a small hillock on the opposite bank, from which, halfway up the slope, projected a huge granite boulder at an angle of approximately 45º like a giant’s chubby finger pointing at the cloud-wisped moon.

This was the place McAndrew had described just before she had sliced the living tongue from his head and fed it to her colony of rats.

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Ordinarily she would have relied on her dark enchantments alone to ensure he held his tongue, however, and quite literally as she cupped the sluglike pink organ in her palm, she felt more secure knowing that the feral grunting he’d been reduced to uttering was insurance indeed. But, she mused, just to guarantee her anonymity, she proceeded to carve out his eyes with the same knife so recently employed to silence the boy.

The tongueless squeals of his agony spurred the witch on to an almost sexual crescendo before she wearied of the game and ended it with a blow to the head from a solid mahogany cudgel. His head flopped forward in the chair, flecks of red foam burbled from his crimson maw and thick rivulets of blood coarsed down his cheeks from the useless sockets where once his pretty blue eyes had been. They too had been tossed to the hungry rats, being shredded and consumed within seconds of them hitting the floor.

The cat purred in contentment at the memory, licking and running a sensual paw across her jowls as she contemplated the face of the hill before her.

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In a matter of seconds, a pale, slender form, full breasted yet slight of build stood naked in the watery moonlight, the vial pendant still intact on the choker at her neck.

She drew the vial from the locking mechanism on the chain, unscrewed the cap and trickled some of the dark crimson liquid into her left palm, taking the right hand and dabbing her forefinger into the brew before transcribing a series of strange sigils on her forehead,  throat, chest, abdomen and pubis while uttering a strange guttural incantation and rolling her eyes to the whites back in her skull. She clutched the soft folds of skin below her vagina in her right hand, rested the other flat on the crown of her head and completed the ritual.

Grey mists began to rise from the riverbank in the shadow of the boulder, curling in spiralling twists upward, converging into an ethereal rope, crackling with some dark incipient energy before the moon disappeared from view, an oppressive purple cloudmass blotting its light from the clearing. Sheet lightning flashed across the sky backlighting the heavy roiling purple miasma in violet streaks and heavy rain began to fall as if from nowhere, smashing into the river in a violent torrent.

Agnes was shrieking to the winds, arms up and outstretched, skin pulled translucent across her breasts, mud splashed up around her calves, eyes white and taking the full frontal brunt of the deluge with no apparent discomfort.

A fork of lightning snaked down from the booming sky to connect with the rope of mist she had conjured from the Earth. Ozone fizzled and popped, the mists ignited and a fiery form appeared scant inches above the grass, resembling an elongated yoni – the portal – it had worked – it was open.

But first, she transmogrified back into feline form sprinting toward the cliff face - she had an appointment with the Sinclair serving staff.

The black cat bounded up the serrated cliff, the erect ridge of fur along her spine highlighted gold from the shimmering suspended portal, aware that time was of the essence and the spell would not hold the doorway open for too long but she had to take the risk. The alternative of arriving in unknown realms in newborn nakedness was potentially more compromising.

As the cat disappeared over the ridge, a hand parted the gorse bushes to the east of the clearing, the now drenched owner staring in amazement at the apparition hanging in mid air. He took several steps toward the seething gash in reality intent on exploring its innate nature, reaching out to pass a hand through the opening and in an instant the field vibrated around his wrist inexorably pulling him forward until he disappeared from view.