The hillside was near invisible as he made his approach along the ridge. Mist danced and swayed; swirling into one as it encased it in a chamber of moving white. It seemed to breathe, pulsing, as if it had its own heartbeat, thumping and pumping throughout the landscape. It flowed along the ground, moving silently until it finally found him.
He breathed deeply, his body relaxing. The brisk air burned his nostrils slightly, but he did not care. He shivered faintly yet paid it no mind. Closing his eyes, he allowed his body to become in tune with the ever-changing landscape, body rocking to the steady thrum of the mist’s call. He began to walk forwards again, beckoned as he traipsed across the obscured, damp ground. Tendrils of mist curled delicately around his legs as his destination loomed closer.
I’m coming.
Every year it was the same. A sudden urge would take him, powerful and ancient, luring him – guiding him. Samhain was on the horizon. The ancient Celtic festival of the dead where the doorways to the Otherworld opened. The realm of the spirits, faeries, and immortals to become closer to the mortal one, a thin veil between humans and what lay beyond. But for him, it was the one day a year he seemed to lose all sense. The one day he would leave his comfortable home in the city and find himself wandering the dense hillsides of the west coast. It was the one day a year he could not bear to be anywhere else but on those empty and silent burial grounds. He would find himself at the base of that small hill and make his way up.
However, once he reached the base of the hill, he stopped, noticing something beside his right foot. It was a thin piece of string trailing across the ground. He bent down and wrapped his fingers around it, the tips brushing the chilled grass as he pulled it up. He scrutinized it closely, confused by its presence, before tugging it lightly. The string suddenly became taut in his hand. Looking up, he saw how it had lifted, how it seemed to float in the mist, growing fainter and fainter until it was swallowed entirely. The end obscured by the endless white.
He stood up slowly, blindly following the string’s lead into the fog. He began to tread uphill, careful not to lose his grasp on the string.
The earth seemed to hum beneath his feet, becoming restless and more noticeable the closer he came to the cairn. With every step he took, he could feel his body connect deeper with the earth, an inescapable force bending him to its every whim. The scent of the air filled him, poured down his oesophagus and settled down into a deep heaviness within him – an inescapabilty that hadn’t been there before. It was something unknown, ancient – primal.
Before he realised what he was doing, he found himself in front of a deep abyss, the string disappearing within. The chamber cairn.
Vague silhouettes of standing stones peered from the mist, spying on him from their imposing circle, the mist trailing off them in waves as it cascaded across the ground, moving slowly in the distance. The burial ground itself, however, was not obscured in the slightest. The mist would come closer to the cairn only to be repelled, and back off in a silent hurry, leaving the stones untampered and untouched.
The Cairn itself was exactly as it had always been. Its greyish stones, mottled with green moss, held upright, suspending the horizontal slab that roofed the entrance to the burial chamber.
Through the entrance nothing could be seen within the unfathomable blackness. It seemed light itself was swallowed whole and mercilessly extinguished within those cavernous depths, consumed by the endless light-eater.
His arm that held the string slackened slightly as he took in the burial site. He crouched down and looked within, trying to catch a hopeless glimpse of what was beyond. His eyes squinted as he laid his hand on the stone above. It was cool and the coarseness of the rock rubbed uncomfortably against his skin.
He tilted his head to the side and tugged the string once more, hoping for some give in its rigidity. There was none. In fact, it seemed to have become more taut.
He sighed and stood up, dropping the string as he did so. He wiped his hands on his trousers before he turned around. The white mist had now encroached closer, the vague outline of the standing stones he once saw had now been devoured whole. The eager thrumming of the earth had halted, making his senses sharpen. His eyes widened as he spun around in search for the way back down – the trance that consumed his very being now broken.
The mist grew closer and closer, spinning like a hurricane, but once he realised what was happening, it was too late. He felt the mist sink into him, constrict him and inhabit his very being. He thought to scream, desperate for help.
But no one would have heard him.
Once the mist settled and cleared, he was gone. No whisper of man, nor mist could be found. Only the silence of the long dead remained.
Comments