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and, of course, my eternal thanks, go to patreon.com/storiesfromthehearthpodcast; or, hit the link in the description down below. Welcome to Stories From The Hearth, the podcast
for tall tales and fantastical fiction, short stories the likes of which you might once
have heard a wandering bard tell, to a group of villagers, gathered around the fire. Explore
the history of storytelling in mid-month miniseries. And then, on the last Sunday of the month,
escape your
surroundings with a brand-new story, written and performed by me: Calum
Bannerman. Historical, romantic, science fiction, or fantasy; these are tales to transport you,
doorways into another world… A quick shout-out and thank you to my top-tier
patrons, Ruathy and Mully! Your support warms my soggy little heart. This month’s story
is a Halloween special, designed to curdle your blood, chill your spine, and stand your
hairs on end. It's based in a Scottish legend - that of the Selkie. And, if you
've listened
to my special bonus episode, which I released earlier this month - The Merwife of Shetland
- then you are in some way prepared. And yet, could anything prepare you for the horrors
within? This is Episode Fourteen: The Selkie of Beinn
Nam Mic Caillte. Happy Halloween... - ‘Light from the window of the bothy fell
as would candlelight from a cracked lantern. Spilling through narrow stonework, it cut
a weak shard across the moorland, dead heather and compact pockets of last winter’s sno
w
shying from the luminescence. Where the light petered out, the loch began. Sleek as seal
skin, the surface of the water was dark and oily, a thin film of scum discolouring its
edges. ‘The loch, known to
those few locals who had the misfortune of neighbouring it, was nameless. It was bad
luck, they warned, to name such a place. Instead, the shepherds, drovers, and crofters, who
had at times slept in the bothy, simply called the murky waters: ‘His Hame’. Provided
you understood you were trespass
ing on His land, it was said you might still pass the
night in peace.’ Charlie prodded at the logs, crackling and
popping in the grate, with a fractured antler he’d found on the hike earlier that day.
Casually, he threw another log on the fire, and when it caught ablaze leaned in close
to relight the half-extinguished joint hanging from his lips. ‘Watch yersel ya fucking
clown!’ laughed his girlfriend, Nadiya, from the corner. ‘A dinnae want ma knew
kecks smellin’ a’ burnt feckin’ beard!’ Charli
e smirked. ‘Quicker than shaving,’
he replied dryly. This earned a few chuckles
from those around the room, not too wigged out by the heady combination of mushrooms,
marijuana, and wee Maggie’s latest ghost story. As the laughter died,
and a sighing wind sank its fingers into the crumbling mortar of the group’s lodgings,
Maggie continued. ‘You see, long before the bothy was left
to the mercy of the elements; long before it was even built – centuries before the
folk wandering this dark, mulchy co
rner of the world spoke English, before they spoke
Gaelic even; back when those who lived close by spoke a strange, long-forgotten language,
when they painted themselves in woad and kenned the land intimately – even back then, this
place was already hame to a much more ancient creature. ‘The crofters of a
hundred years ago didn’t invent the phrase ‘His Hame’, of course. They borrowed it
from generations of folk who had come before, who had in turn learned that they, no matter
how deeply-attached
to the land they might be, were but trespassers when on the shores
of the loch. ‘In the lee of the
mountain called Beinn Nam Mic Caillte, ‘His Hame’ has sat untouched and unchanged since
time began. No streams enter it, nor burns, nor rivers. And none leave. If the loch is
fed by anything other than rainwater, then it shows no signs, for its waters are as stagnant
and deathly as the stories which surround it. And yet, its surface does not go unbroken.
Though no fish nor eels dwell here, there i
s one being which makes this loch its hame. ‘I say “being”,
for this is no animal. No human either. It is a leftover, from days when the world was
smaller, and fuller of magic.’ Davey, closely examining the palm of his right
hand as its line swirled and breathed, snorted. Maggie accepted the joint
from Charlie, still by the fire, and took a long, deep drag. As she held the smoke in
her lungs, she fixed her gaze on a point just over Davey’s shoulder, and cocked an eyebrow.
She exhaled the purplis
h plume, and took another quick hit before offering the spliff up to
Davey. Davey, a big bastard
with a beer belly stretching his Berghaus jacket, joiner’s trousers tucked into socks
tucked into Timberland boots – epitomising a particular brand of Scottish outdoorsman
– leaned forward from his seat to take the joint. Just before his fingers
could brush the sculpted paper, however, Maggie jerked her hand back, holding the thing just
out of the big man’s reach. ‘Aw, come oan tae fuck!’
moaned Dave
y. ‘Who here… believes
in magic?’ said Maggie, a rye smile on her face. She brandished the joint aloft, and
the last member of the party – a timid tourist, who they’d met earlier that day near the
summit of the mountain – piped up. ‘Ja, over here!’ ‘Ha-ha!’ laughed
Maggie. ‘Good man, Luka!’ and saying so, she half-passed, half-chucked the joint across
the room. Luka the German jumped skittishly out of the way of the missile, much to the
amusement of his companions. He picked the spliff up off th
e floor, blew the dust from
it, and toked. ‘Magic,’ he said,
his thick accent all the thicker for the settling smoke. The room rattled with laughter, and
Maggie noticed from the corner of her eye that even the snubbed Davey couldn’t help
but grin. She went on with her story. ‘When the world was
smaller, and fuller of magic, there were races of beings who we might think of as being…
halfway evolved. Half-animal, half-human. It was from one of these races that the being
of Beinn Nam Mic Caillte ca
me from. The thing which made its hame in the loch, was a selkie…’ Maggie let the word fill
the air of the bothy, suppressing a smile as the wind hissed, and slithered in under
the door, as if emphasising her point. ‘The Selkie of Beinn
Nam Mic Caillte, though, is not just a selkie. For even selkies must mate and breed, travel
and change, live and die. Naw. The Selkie of Beinn Nam Mic Caillte is said tae have
once been a king among selkies. That is, until, in the time before Scotland was Alba, h
e was
disgraced, dethroned, and made an outcast. ‘Of course, no one
kens for sure exactly why he was, but rumours abound. According tae legend, this king of
the selkies grew old and greedy. Life at sea and in Scotland’s estuaries began tae bore
him, and he grew jealous when his womenfolk took human lovers. Worse still, he grew angry
when human lovers took them, stealing their seal skin so that they could not return to
the waters, and to their king. This particular selkie, so the story goes, deci
ded to turn
the tables on the upper world, and in time developed a taste… for human flesh. ‘His kind banished
him for his gruesome malfeasance, and ever since then he’s eeked out an existence in
the loch in the shadow of Beinn Nam Mic Caillte, the loch right outside this very bothy, surviving
only on the human victims foolish enough to stumble across his path…’ The bothy to which Maggie referred was a single
room cabin built of stone and mortar, once thatched, but now sporting a roof of crumblin
g
slate. It looked like the kind of house a child would draw, if asked to – two Latin
cross windows either side of a door, old, wooden, and flush with the stone. Inside, huddled around
the hearth’s single source of light and heat, were four friends and a stranger. The
stranger, Luka Dietrich, we’ve already mentioned was met earlier that day, near the summit
of the mountain. The friends, on the other hand, were a disparate group, but all the
closer for it. They were joined, as they say, at the hi
p. The group had met in Glasgow,
variously attending college, university, being from the city itself, or having escaped there,
for reasons plainly obvious to the group. They had come to Glasgow from all four corners
of Scotland. To look at them was to
see such unique characters you’d never in your life have put them together. And yet,
whilst the pictures they presented of themselves seemed to clash quite violently, their experiences
– the lives they held within – had, without a doubt, been cut f
rom the same cloth. All
four of the friends had grown up poor, surrounded by small, insular communities which promoted
or suffered from bigotry, in one form or another. All four had been drawn to nature from an
early age – the hills, moors, and forests of their native land offering some reprieve,
some sanctuary from the council estates, tenement streets, or desolate, forgotten villages they
called home. And all four had sought an escape from that life: from the prejudices and the
small-mindednes
s which clawed and dragged and tugged at their heels, which tainted their
every meal and filled their throats with a claggy, unyielding weight; which fogged their
minds and, worst of all, suppressed their pursuits of self, to which each of them had
always strove. Arriving in Glasgow,
Scotland’s largest city – with its red-brick buildings, grey and rain-dashed streets, and
never-finished construction works – they had, once the novelty had washed off, experienced
a keen desolation. But then, as if
by fate, they had met each other, and their lives had
changed. The group had met in
an ancient pub called the Old Toll Bar, one Christmas Eve. Davey, born and bred in that
great, hulking town, yet equally sequestered to his own small pocket of it, called the
Old Toll his local. The others had flitted there by chance, seeking shelter from the
sleet. With exceedingly cheap pints of stout on tap, and some decent music on the jukebox,
the rest, as they say, was history. Now, as Maggie, the eccentri
c queer with the
weird, Shetlandic accent brought her strange and unnerving story to a close, she saw that
the ramshackle bothy was full, as the Old Toll Bar had been all those years ago, with
friends. On their faces, Davey, Nadiya, and Charlie wore bemused smiles. Only Luka the
stranger carried the fearful expression which Maggie felt her tale deserved. Presently, the German
coughed through the last of the joint, and offered it to the room. Big Davey polished off
the dregs of a tinny, and crump
led it in one massive hand. He stood up, stretching and
cracking, and marched over to the skinny blonde. ‘Al take that, pal.
Danker shoon!’ Then, turning to Maggie, he said: ‘That it then, Mags? Ye’ve brought
us aw on a med hike up the back erse a’ the Highlands tae stay owernight in a hauntit
bothy? Fuckin’ braw!’ Davey’s laugh startled poor Luka even further, and Maggie
rolled her eyes. ‘It’s no haunted
ya eejit. Haunted would imply a ghost story, and ma story’s not a ghost story.’ Charlie, st
ill staring
transfixed into the belly of the fire, as his drug-addled brain contorted the flames
and sparks, animating Maggie’s story in rich orange and furious white, spoke, without
breaking concentration. ‘C’mon, Mags, have
ee gone soft in the heid?’ He snorted. ‘Ee dinnae really believe aw that guff, div ee?’ Nadiya poked her boyfriend
in the side, her subtle gesture immediately lost beneath Charlie’s melodramatic yowl. ‘Whit did ee dae that
fur?!’ he exclaimed. ‘Just wheesht, would
ye,’ repl
ied Nadiya. ‘Nae need tae take the piss.’ ‘I wasni–’ but
Charlie’s protests were silenced with another jab to his ribs. Davey, still standing
next to the quietly observant German, put an intoxicated arm around the boy’s shoulders.
Luka visibly strained under the weight. ‘What dae you make
of all this, my European friend?’ slurred Davey, in a dialect as close to “proper
English” as he could make it. Luka Dietrich stood about
six or seven inches taller than Big Davey Fae Ibrox. He wore his hair in
a mess of golden
curls, wound tightly to his scalp but wildly assembled all the same. A cut which would
have looked clumsy and unkempt on anyone else. The rest of him, however, made up for the
unruliness of his locks. He was clean shaven, his skin smooth and unblemished – no spots
nor visible scars – and his cheekbones were high and pronounced. His lips were thin, contrasting
eyes a little larger than average, with piercing irises, Aryan blue and unreadable, sat between
fluttering sets of fair
and fine eyelashes. Luka wasn’t particularly
muscular, but he was evidently fit, his unbranded hiking gear hugging slender limbs and a belly
free of fat. His hands were milk white against the blue of his knitted jumper, veins of a
similar blue readily visible between the taught and bony knuckles. Between his fingers the
skin grew thinly, yet more abundantly than normal, rising almost to the middle knuckle
between digits. All in all, a textbook
example of what unworldly Scotsman Davey Crooks thou
ght of, when he thought of a German. The room had grown quiet,
anticipating Luka’s response. The lad’s eyes betrayed a slight lag between the hearing
and comprehension of Davey’s question, but after a while, he answered. ‘Well, I think Maggie
tells a very good story. I certainly would not wish to encounter this… how do you call
it?’ ‘Selkie’, answered
the room. ‘Ja. Selkie. It sounds
quite unpleasant,’ continued Luka, his tone considered and respectful. ‘How does your…
selkie look like, Mags? Ma
y I call you Mags?’ ‘Of course you may,
pal,’ answered Maggie, wearing a proud grin. She turned to the rest of the room. ‘At
least someone around here appreciates a good story!’ ‘Selkies, Luka, hell…
that’s a good question! Y’see, selkies can take any number of forms, especially thisselkie.
Maistly, they look like seals, right? When they’re in the water – oot taa sea or
in a loch or a river or whatever, they look jist like seals. In fact, you can hardly tell
a selkie and a seal apart… until they
step on land.’ ‘And ee ken this…
how?’ piped up Charlie, earning another rib-prod from Nadiya, whose only major complain
about her boyfriend was his incessant need to bicker with her best pal. ‘Ah told you, Chazza
man, I’ve been here before.’ Charlie laughed. ‘Aw so ee’ve seen
‘um have ee? This selkie king?’ ‘Am just tryin’ taa
tell ma–!’ began Maggie, but her simmering frustrations were soothed before they had
time to boil, thanks to an interjection from the German. ‘What happens then?’ Maggie
shot Charlie a
triumphant look. ‘Well, whenever a selkie
steps on tae land, they’re forced tae shed their skin. Their sealskin, that is. At which
point they taak on daa skin o’ a man or wuman.’ As the mushrooms and marijuana seeped
deeper into Maggie’s bloodstream, her native Shetland dialect started cropping up more
and more. Stoned, but not oblivious, Maggie caught the struggled look in Luka’s narrowing
eyes. She cleared her throat and shook herself a little, like a wet dog emerging from the
sea. ‘Sorry pal. What ah
mean to say, is that a selkie is forced to take on the appearance of a human when they
step on dry land. Maist selkies, given they are half man, half beastie, have their ain
human likeness, like. But not this selkie. Like a told you earlier, this selkie was
banished by his folk. Well, legend has it that when he was banished they took his human
skin frae hum, in an attempt to confine him to the water for all eternity, so as he could
nivver again trouble human folk. ‘Probl
em is…’ Maggie
stopped to sip from her water bottle. The water tasted to her
like liquid crystal, the microscopic bubbles bursting on her tongue, her tongue like a
causeway at hightide. Her eyes grew wide as she pulled the bottle away from her to inspect
its contents. The water inside sloshed and swirled like ocean waves. She gyrated the
bottle in her hand, forming a mini-whirlpool inside, and laughed euphorically. Charlie, the only seasoned
user in the room, grinned, despite himself. ‘Everythin
g just tastes
better, eh, Mags?’ he said, chuckling. By his side, Nadiya relaxed a little. Maggie shook herself
again, in the same canine fashion, and searched for the frayed end of her story. Luka, sober
but for a few puffs of the joint, reminded her of her place. ‘Right, aye. Thanks
Luka. Problem is… those who banished him hadn’t taken into consideration the curiosity
of people. Left alone, the Selkie of Beinn Nam Mic Caillte might well have lived a sad,
solitary life, and died in the waters o
f the loch. Problem is: he wasn’t left alain,
alone, pardon moi.’ ‘That’s French, Mags.’ ‘Shut it, Charlie. ‘You see, no matter
how many terrible tales have been told about this place, people continue to come here – just
look at us! Here, despite it all.’ ‘Here because you dragged
us aw kickin’ an’ screamin’, Maggie, ya absolute nonce!’ protested Davey. ‘Ho, Davey my man,’
chirped up Nadiya, ‘enough ae the nonce patter, eh? She’s a dyke, no a paedo.’ ‘Pansexual!’ corrected
Maggie, ‘and ah don’t
thinkn you should be using terms like–’ ‘We’re sound with…
whatever,’ interrupted Nadiya. ‘Ken, whatever yer sexuelle Neigung is, eh Luka pal?’ Then,
turning to Charlie with a wink. ‘There’s some German for you, son.’ Luka looked utterly perplexed,
all the more confused for the sudden inclusion of the German for ‘sexual proclivity’
breaking up a barrage of nonsensical Scots. ‘Wheeeesht, yous!’
shouted Maggie. ‘Ye dinnae think ah’d hev brought ye here if ah didnae think it
wis safe, do ye?’ The g
roup looked unconvinced. ‘Anyways, Luka, as ah was saying. As I was
saying, the problem is that the selkie wasn’t left alone. There was always someone too curious
not to come here, after hearing his story. So, before long, he’d gathered a fine wardrobe
of human skin. Pictish warriors, Irish priests, Roman centurions, peasants, farmers, English
reivers, boys, men, old men, Proddies, Fenians, wandering poets, landowners, Jacobites, Covenanters,
the odd pissed-up junkie on a soul-searching hiking t
rip, their train bound outta the bottom
a’ Leith walk,’ Charlie snorted approvingly
at the reference. Big Davey took a second, then another, then finally laughed, so loudly
he caused Luka to jump. ‘Ha-ha! Lit Train–’
he began. ‘Yes, Davey’ said
Maggie, cutting him off. ‘Like Trainspotting. So, you see Luka, he’s got skins of all
manner o’ men whae were stupid enough to cross his path. Some o’ the skins are too
old now, tae wear without arousing suspicion. He’s a clever bastard mind. A king of hi
s
kind. Some o’ them have just outgrown his tastes in fashion, though still he keeps them
around, weighted to the bottom of the loch by the bones of their previous occupiers. ‘Fact o’ the matter
is, Luka mein Freund, there’s no way of knowing what the Selkie of Beinn Nam Mic Caillte
will look like from one day to the next. His disguises are how he’s evaded capture all
these years, how he lures his victims, makes ‘em feel safe and sound before he nabs thur
birthday suits.’ Maggie laughed at her o
wn joke. ‘Rumour has it, he likes the feel
of foreign flesh the best…’ Luka, rolling another
joint, stopped. He looked down at the half-crafted spliff, wondering whether sharing another
smoke with this bunch of tripping Scots was such a good idea after all. Big Davey tightened his
hold around the German’s shoulders. ‘Ho! Mags! No on, mun.
Yer scaring the poor lad. Christ on a bike, yer scarin’ me!’ Maggie looked from Davey
to Charlie to Nadiya, then back to Davey and Luka. ‘Aye, c’mon Mags,’
sai
d Nadiya, ‘let’s just enjoy the trip, eh?’ Her face, framed by a dark green hijab
chosen specifically to match her hiking outfit, betrayed more than just a sincere desire to
carry on with the hallucinogenic journey. As Mags studied the face of her best friend,
she worried that perhaps she had pushed the story just a little too far. Charlie, seasoned tripper
and Maggie-sceptic though he was, also looked disconcerted. Charlie Moffat was of
the short and plump variety, his ginger hair the colour of
carrots, his eyes the green
of carrot tops. Though not conventionally attractive, he had an air about him – a
dry wit and a confidence of character, not flashy, just self-assured – which nevertheless
made him quite pretty in the right eyes. As it happened, Nadiya Jalal had such a set of
eyes. They made an intriguing couple. Nadiya – a brash Ayrshire lass, born to Iranian
migrants; strikingly handsome, with small chestnut eyes and one hell of an arse – and
Charlie – native of a small, very white
, very rural town in the Scottish Borders, with
a doughy body currently a deep shade of lobster, a scraggly beard hiding a double chin, which
was threatening to find a third if he wasn’t more careful with the Jaffa cakes and Irn-Bru,
and no arse worth mentioning. The disparity between
the pair could be most succinctly summarised by Big Davey’s signature catchphrase: “A
canni fuckin’ wait ti see the nick a’ your bairns, mun.” It was the group’s
firm belief that when Davey said this, he was pictur
ing a ginger newborn in a burka,
presumably believing that women of Arabic heritage knitted their children baby-sized
hijab in the womb. Sensing that his girlfriend’s
trip was taking a turn for the paranoid, Charlie spoke up. ‘Right, enough o’
this ghost-story pish. It’s aboot that time o’ the night ti gaun an’ hiv a look at
the stars, ah hink. Trust iz, if eev nivver seen the stars on mushies, eer in fer a treat.’ ‘Sounds good, Charlie
ma boy,’ agreed Davey, vocalising the accord of his nodding
companions. As the fire roared, tension
in the cabin began to dissipate. Lifting themselves gradually out of their various states of inebriation,
the group began to slip back into half-dried walking boots, pulling on knitted bonnets
and applying the requisite mosquito repellent as they did. For those who had indulged, the
psychedelic mushrooms had begun the climb towards their zenith, and the buttery firelight
on the walls seemed to radiate warmth and goodwill. Outside, an owl hooted, and the
f
riends laughed, as if that sound was the funniest thing in the world. Nadiya even laughed
until she was buckled over, which got Charlie going. The rest fell like dominoes. Big Davey
Fae Ibrox took a long swig from his bottle of tonic and held it in the air like William
Wallace, brandishing the head of the Sheriff of Lanark. ‘Here,’ he said,
barely containing his giggles, ‘Buckfast makes ye fuck fast. Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha!’ The
eyes of the company glistened with tears of mirth, and even Luka, though n
ot tripping,
thought the stupid wordplay hilarious. As the laughter faded, the friends finished readying
themselves for their trip outside, and in their minds began dreaming of how wonderful
the stars were going to look. It was then that there came a knock at the
door. ‘Nope! No a fucking chance,’ proclaimed
Davey, prizing the tentative mollusc of silence from its rock with a voice like a diver’s
knife. Nadiya elbowed the big
man in the ribs, her furrowed brows telling him to shut up, her forehe
ad dappled with
sweat. Charlie’s brows travelled
to meet his hairline, his eyes wide and his pupils wider. He squeezed Nadiya’s hand
and stubbed out the latest in a succession of joints on the stonework of the bothy’s
windowsill. Maggie Skellister dropped
her jaw to the ground. To her, the knocks at the door had rippled through the room in
visible waves, like those left by a pebble, skimmed across water. She watched the last
of them now as two lines collided in the corner, and echoed back along
the wall. As they passed
over and through her, her eyebrows undulated in rhythm, and she thought that in that moment
she knew exactly who was stood on the other side of the door. Luka Dietrich, straw-blonde
brows knitting toward each other as he attempted to make sense of the terror gripping his present
company, said rather loudly: ‘Are we not going to
answer that?’ Luka’s question was
met with a chorus of angry, fearful eyes. Once more, there three
knocks at the door. Nadiya could hear the
thud
of her heart, the thrum of blood as it coursed through her ears. ‘Deutschland! You silly
bastard!’ scorned Davey, barely louder than the whispering wind. ‘Just a bad trip, you’re
just tripping,’ whispered Charlie to Nadiya, her head buried in his shoulder, but her boyfriend’s
voice was missing its usual self-assurance. Maggie, on the other
hand, found that she was not in the least bit scared. In fact, the soundwaves of the
beckoning knock felt to her warm, like a dram of whisky in the dead of w
inter, or the succulent
heat of summer sun on Scottish skin. Before she knew what she was doing, she was on her
feet, her hand outstretched toward the piece of string which sufficed for a door handle. Davey blocked her way. ‘You high!?’ he asked. Maggie just smiled and
went to push past him. Davey stepped in front of her again, this time gripping her bicep
with all the inhuman strength of a man raised on fritter rolls, pizza crunches, and tonic. Maggie, red-headed and
imbued with the characteris
tic fieriness of her ginger kinfolk, met Davey’s physicality
with an uncommon calmness. She took the big man’s wrist between thumb and forefinger,
and spoke gently. ‘You’re not really
scared of a ghost story, are you Crooks?’ Her question was calculated, teasing in manner
unlike her. Davey, intelligent, but
less emotionally astute than the average man (which isn’t saying a lot), cycled slowly
through a few possible retorts. Maggie watched as his face betrayed each thought. Eventually,
stumped, h
e released his grip on Maggie’s arm, and stood aside. His pals Charlie and
Nadiya could do nothing but look on, gobsmacked, frozen in place. As if in a dream, it
seemed to Maggie that the door to their small abode pulsated with light – the light of
evening sun on a changing tide, of an aquarium’s observation room, dark but for those marching
quarter notes of gold. As there came another knock at the door, she heard the sound as
if it were muffled, underwater. She saw it, too, the impression of th
e visitor’s mitt
somehow visible on her side of the wooden frame. Gliding to the door,
Maggie took hold of the fading green string, and pulled. The swollen wood of the door scraped
noisily through grooves long-worn into the stone of the floor. Light from the bothy
spilled roaring into the night, and met the silhouette of a sunken figure, standing in
the doorway. The bothy’s residents stood transfixed. The thing in the doorway
drew its cloaks about itself, its face concealed amongst them. Only th
e fire continued
unphased, though had the party paid better attention, they might have noticed it burn
a little faster, a little brighter. It was Luka the German
who was once again the first to speak. ‘Hallo,’ he said,
and the introduction of sound caused Davey, Charlie and Nadiya to jump. ‘Would you like
to come in? We have a little whisky.’ The eyes of the room
turned slowly back to the figure outside. It seemed at first not
to react, but as their vision adjusted to its shadowy mass, th percei
ved a slow, deliberate
bowing motion; a concession, perhaps. ‘You must be cold,’
said Maggie to the newcomer, though indeed she relished the cool chill of the night on
her exposed forearms, fancying she could feel its fingers exploring her skin. Again, the figure bowed,
though whether it did in recognition, or respect, or out of sheer habit, she did not know. As the figure stepped
inside, the rest of the group stepped away in tandem, pushed by the magnitude of its
presence. Luka was first to sna
p from his reveries, and turned to look for the whisky
bottle. Maggie gestured for the figure to take a seat by the fire. It followed her finger
with its eyes, two marbles of drowning obsidian. Slowly, the figure turned back to Maggie,
then to a corner of the room. There, the party saw, as if for the first time, a dank and
dreary nook shelved into the back wall of the bothy. Somehow, not one of them had noticed
this nook before. Certainly, they would have remembered it if they had, for just to l
ook
at it singed the nostrils. The stonework in that corner had long ago been lost to the
dark, congealing mould of damp rot, and now its seat was a living gallery of moss and
fungi, fed by a steady trickle of fetid water which seeped in through a crack in the ceiling. The visitor looked back
to Maggie, and in its lustrous pupils she felt herself falling, weightless and free,
her mind expansive and expanding, intoxicated, taken. Her friends watched as she fawned,
nodding her consent. Slowly, thi
s hunchback
of furs trudged over to the corner of the bothy, its footsteps slapping on the stone,
leaving small puddles in its wake. As it passed them, Davey,
Charlie and Nadiya recoiled at the stench. The smell wafting from the folds of the thing’s
overcoat arrested the senses. It stung their nostrils like ripe onion, caused their eyes
to water. It was heavy and languorous, like it might clog the pores and slicken the skin
with its grease. To each of the hikers, the aroma smelled a little diffe
rent. It had the
lingering quality of tuna brine, and the acridity of freshly cut chili peppers; it was underscored,
too, by a squalid dampness, like that of the nook toward which it was headed, and all these
notes were mashed together with the repugnance of newly laid excrement. Luka frowned as the figure
lumbered by him. Holding out a glass of whisky as welcomingly as he could, he watched the
figure reach out a hand, before seeming to suddenly change its mind. The look in its
eyes made Luka’s
hair stand on end. With little regard for
her friends, Maggie left the door ajar, wedged on the uneven flooring, and followed the figure
further into the room. She inhaled deeply as its odour washed over her, closing her
eyes, relishing the stench. The thing finally reached
the bothy nook, and lowered itself to the seat. More relaxed now than it had initially
seemed, it leaned back, the downy growth of fungus squelching beneath it, and turned its
face up to trickling water. It sighed, then, and
as the tension in the room seemed momentarily
want to wane, the door to the swung shut with a bang. The party jumped. Davey
screamed. Luka dropped the whisky glass to smash on the stone floor. It was a moment
before they realised that with the exit of night, so too had the being’s stench left
their nostrils. Nadiya tentatively removed the cloth of her hijab from over her nose,
and clenched Charlie’s bicep until her knuckles turned white. Nobody else moved. The adrenaline of fight
or flight cours
ed their bodies, sometimes negating the effects of the psychedelic mushrooms,
sometimes confusing and distorting them even further – accelerating the twisting vortexes
of colour and sound, heightening the sensation of dissociation. The presence of the newcomer,
though frightening, seemed to all non-negotiable. It was as here as, they supposed, unquestioningly,
it had always been. As the weary light fro the fire flickered, each member of the group
saw something different, resting in the horrid no
ok. According to later statements,
this is what they saw. To Charlie and Nadiya,
the visitor assumed the guise of an old man; an ancient man, wrinkles etched into skin
as deep as trenches or valleys, the skin itself grey with age. The old man was wrapped in
layer upon layer of fur, heavy with moisture, all navy black and thick, with hairs long
and matted. His hood covered most of his face, but where light broke the shadows, they saw
that the man wore a long, silvered moustache, threadbare and po
inted, his eyes glazed with
cataracts above a nose flat and wide. The couple were afraid of the old man, who sat
so perfectly still, but they were curious, also. To Maggie Skellister,
there were no words which could have done justice to the harmony achieved between colour
and light, shape and shadow, softness and definition, which surrounded the figure. It
seemed to Maggie that with each slight inflection or movement of the creature’s massive frame,
it took on a different image. At once a woman
of graceful amplitude, her black hair curling
over naked bodice, whilst simultaneously a spirit of the forest, deep green and lustrous
as the leaves of a rhododendron. In one instant a massive raven, perched on the stonework
in a riot of heaving feathers, its beak hooked and trembling with speech; in the next, a
living statue of obsidian marble, polished and yet somehow worn, hewn of one perfectly
large block, as fluid in preserved movement as the giant spiders of of Louise Bourgeois.
And no mat
ter the incarnation, always those eyes: unbroken black, as endless as the universe,
as captivating as the night sky, their gaze locked with hers, opening a channel of thought
which communicated unspeakable love. To Maggie the being was Narcissus, and she the reflective
pool. For big Davey, on the
other hand, who was the most inebriated of the group, the thing in the watery hole visibly
shuddered with energy, the sound of which roared in his eardrums like waves against
the cliffs. As such, its ou
tline was blurry, impermanent. It was a mass of ugly, turgid
fur, short black hairs curly and wet, shoulders hulking above the contorted musculature of
its frame. It seethed. Horned and horny toothed, it was a great bull, an ox, a boar with gills
and fins and blubber which sloughed from it to pile on the floor in inky pools of melted
black. From its sunken nostrils poured jets of condensing steam, and as the beast turned
its eyes from Maggie to him, he felt the strength in his muscles falter. It
s gaze was that of
ivy to a tree, not just hungry, but boastful, greedy. Davey felt that the machinery in his
chest could not maintain this eye contact for much longer, and yet he could not look
away. He turned sheet white by the light of the fire. And then there was Luka,
the German. Luka, who had not partaken of the hallucinogens. To Luka, the thing in the
nook was – quite clearly – a seal. Or, at least, now that
it had moved into the light, it was clear that it was no human. Its head was smoo
th
and bald, greying blue in hue. On its face it wore a set of silvered whiskers, a stubby
snout and eyes bulging and devoid of colour, which reminded Luka of the deepest sea. Its
body was too large to be that of a seal’s, but then so too was it overlarge for a grown
man. Luka could not tell whether the sleek fur draped over its shoulders was a part of
it, or not. Though it clearly walked on two feet, Luka surmised that those feet probably
did not resemble his own. Certainly, the hand which had
reached out toward his proffered
whisky had been more paw, than hand: large and webbed and fingerless. Just a seal, thought
Luka, in a daze. But then the seal looked
at him, and in his heart he heard the whisperings of a thousand lost sons. The air in the bothy was still, lying heavy
in the lungs of the campers. Few dared even to breathe, for fear of attracting the attention
of the newcomer. Few except Maggie, who had moved silently to stand by its shoulder. Slowly she reached out,
trembling fin
gers imagining what they might feel, what they might discover among the lines
of the being’s many faces. Then suddenly, the thing
spoke. ‘There will be time
for that later, Maggie Skellister.’ Its voice seemed to come
from every corner of the room. Mild, it betrayed little emotion or character, yet still it
was… captivating. Ancient, without doubt, and weighted with the wisdom of many lives. ‘Your menfolk are frightened.’ ‘I told them your story,’
replied Maggie, her voice stirring her friends f
rom their trance. ‘Is she speaking to–’
began Nadiya, feeling faint. ‘It is a frightful
story,’ said the Selkie of Beinn Nam Mic Caillte, a hint of playfulness in his voice.
‘And will they pose a problem?’ Maggie thought about
this for a second, ignoring the mounting confusion of her friends who, she suspected, were not
privy to the selkie’s words. ‘No problem,’ she
said at last. ‘They cannot tell truth from fiction.’ ‘Are you sure?’ The
selkie looked not at Maggie but into her, and she felt the
tug of treachery in her chest.
Her treachery, the treachery of one who has knowingly jilted a lover. In her peripheries,
she caught sight of Luka, pulling his phone from his pocket with trembling hands. ‘Shit,’ she cursed.
‘I… I’m so sorry. I forgot. Him. He… wasn’t supposed to be here.’ ‘He can see me, did
you know that?’ Maggie stared blankly
at the creature. ‘Who is he?’ the
selkie asked. Maggie’s answer was
immediate. ‘A stranger. A hiker.
Nobody.’ Luka heard her and began
tapping at his ph
one even more urgently. ‘And has he eaten of
the earth?’ Maggie knew that the selkie king meant the mushrooms. She hesitated before
answering, shame feeding her heartache. ‘…No, I… I’m
sorry, I… he didn’t want–’ ‘His vision is clear,
and he has seen my true form, Maggie Skellister,’ pressed the selkie, his words deliberately
hard. Maggie felt suddenly
close to tears; her words stuck fast in her throat. But then the selkie softened again. ‘Would you like to
see me, too, Maggie?’ Now, like falling
snow,
the shapeshifting selkie settled quietly into its natural shape – that which Luka had
seen – revealing itself to the intoxicated Shetlander, who wept to see the beauty of
the seal-man. Around his sleek and watery body her mind, clear now, saw the ripples
his presence sent along the fabric of reality. The earthly form the selkie took sent shivering
waves of prismatic light toward the fringes of the ether, and as they passed through Maggie
she tingled with lust. Whilst their pal conducted h
er strange, one-sided
conversation with the grotesque stranger, Charlie, Nadiya and Davey shook themselves
free of their petrification. Davey would still not
turn his gaze back to the black beast, all smoke and horns, but at least now the thought
of it did not completely freeze him to the spot. He saw Luka, taller and blonder than
ever thanks to the strengthening effects of the mushrooms, doing something with his phone.
His mouth dry and sticky, Davey finally found his voice. ‘Whit ye… whit ye
u
pti… Luka, pal?’ Luka looked ill. The
weed had fully caught up with him, and now the sober region of his mind was drowning.
He turned to Davey, who did not look too good himself. ‘I try to phone someone
but…’ Luka shook his head, ‘no service.’ Davey cursed, thought
a moment, then tiptoed toward his bag. From it, he produced his final tinny of Tennent’s.
Cracking it open, he slurped the golden nectar down loudly, draining half the can in a single
go. The big man sat back down in his seat, bemused
and bewildered, and allowed the lager
to wash his anxieties away. Luka choked back a sob. ‘Just a trip. Just
a bad, bad trip.’ In the other corner of
the room, back by the struggling fire, Charlie rocked on his heels. ‘Just a bad, bad, bad
trip. Just a trip.’ Nadiya squeezed tighter
on his arm and he looked up into her eyes, saw the worry there. ‘Just a trip, baby.
Just a trip.’ ‘Char,’ whispered
Nadiya, ‘this canni be a trip, man. Jist look at that fuckin’ hing.’ But Charlie would not
be deter
red. ‘Trust me Nadiya Jalal,
it’ll pass, just gotta… just gotta… gotta keep…’ but he trailed off. Confused, high, and still
far from sure what in hell was actually going on, Nadiya mustered her courage. She turned
to Maggie, stood just inches from the strange old man with the white whiskers, the pair’s
eyes locked, neither of them blinking. ‘Mags?’ said Nadiya.
‘Mags, are you… talking to him? Is he talking, Mags? Mags,what’s he saying?’ But Maggie no longer
had ears for anyone but the king, resp
lendent on his throne of emerald and burnished silver.
She was the king’s court, his emissary, his advisor and his herald. And the king had
further questions for her. Questions about the German boy. ‘Did he come alone?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Will he be missed?’ ‘I… I don’t know.’ ‘Will you miss him?’ ‘…No.’ ‘Then will you deal
with him for me, Maggie? For us?’ ‘Yes.’ The selkie reached out
his paw and lightly touched the back of Maggie’s hand. ‘Then you were lucky
to meet him on the path. Your friends will no
longer be needed.’ His paw was soft and
warm, slick with the mossy dampness of the nook. Five claws, cold and smoothed to a scalpel-point
gently grazed the Shetlander’s skin. Though the touch lasted only a fraction of a second,
it filled Maggie Skellister with a joy she could not have previously known was possible.
Up her spine shot an icy thrill of pleasure, and in the flesh behind her stomach moved
the machinery of life. Maggie had known of her desire since first
she’d laid eyes on the old ki
ng, last summer, on a hiking trip with her parents. In fact,
it was they who’d told her the old Shetlandic folktale in the first place: of the Merwife
of Unst, and of the selkie king, banished from his kingdom. It was they who, despite
their Christian aversion to pagan lore, had insisted that they go looking for the loch
in the lee of Beinn Nam Mic Caillte. And there, in the dark,
unmoving waters, the king had revealed himself to her. There he had come to her, in a vision
in her sleep, hauntingl
y beautiful with eyes like the petroleum tails of magpies. She recalled waking in
the mid night, her bedding damp, her body quivering. She recalled the ache
she’d felt for the selkie then, and the desperation to sate it. But never could she have
guessed the euphoria which his actual touch would invoke. And how could she? His touch
was transcendent. As their skin met, time flattened, and through its wafer skein Maggie
saw all of the life her king had lived, all of the lives he had made one. She s
aw moons rise and
fall, weeping among the heather, to rise again in burning globes of orange, yellow, ivory
white. She saw mountains march, rivers ebb, huge unyielding glaciers carve valleys from
the land like her father had whittled trinkets from wood. She saw burning starlight roar
and erode, fading above the neon glow of expanding cities. She saw the landscape awash with mighty
pine and oak, burn and fall and crumple into barren hillsides, then come alive again in
purple heather. She saw the
bothy – her bothy, his bothy – built up layer by layer;
watched its buttery light flick on and off a thousand times, so fast it twinkled like
the light of a distant planet. She watched it fall into disrepair. And through it all she
saw the water of the loch, perfectly still, deeper than sunlight, never growing, never
shrinking; and, feeling drawn, she allowed herself to be pulled beneath the surface. Then, as quickly as it
came, the vision vanished, as the selkie withdrew his paw. Maggie Skellis
ter gasped
for breath, a sob in her throat. It was all she could do not to wail. Her heart had been
broken in two. ‘Patience, my love’
whispered the selkie. ‘Our time is close.’ And then, with a wink,
the bothy fell into darkness. - The search for the two missing hikers enters
its third day, today. Maggie Skellister, 28, and Luka Dietrich, 34, a native of Germany,
were last seen camping with friends Nadiya Jalal, David Crooks, and Charlie Moffat in
the Scottish Highlands, on a Munro known to loc
als as the Mountain of Lost Sons. A mountain
with a reputation for unsolved disappearances. The friends, who were
the first to report the persons as missing, are currently being held in custody as suspects,
in a case Police officials suggest may be rife with foul play. The arrests were made
after the three suspects provided wildly varying accounts of their night spent with the missing
hikers. Toxicology reports indicate that high levels of the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin
were found present in
all three of the suspects’ bloodstreams – a drug known to induce psychosis:
a dissociative state in which individuals are unable to determine what is real and what
is not. Following the failure
of mountain rescue divers to locate any evidence beneath the waters of the mountain’s largest
lake, the search has since turned to the moorland around the summit. Earlier, we spoke once
again with the family of Maggie Skellister. We learned of a previous trip Miss Skellister
had made to the region, on a
family holiday in the Summer of 2021. Mrs Skellister told
our reporters that her daughter was already familiar with the area, and was an experienced
hiker. As such, Mrs Skellister believes her daughter Maggie could not have become lost.
The family of Luka Dietrich declined to give statement. Pressure mounts on Police
Scotland to locate Maggie Skellister and Luka Dietrich, or extract some more reliable information
from the suspects in custody. Those in the area around
Beinn Nam Mic Caillte are ur
ged to come forward if they have any information pertaining to
the disappearances. In other news, a dramatic increase in seal
sightings in the River Thames has brightened up the morning commute considerably. According
to one financial sector worker, the sight of their bobbing heads and shining eyes has
him actually looking forward to going to work… - Light from the window of the bothy falls as
does candlelight from a cracked lantern. Spilling through narrow stonework, it cuts a weak shard
across
the moorland, blooming heather and soft pockets of winter snow shying from its
luminescence. Where the light peters out, the loch begins. Sleek as seal skin, the surface
of the water is dark and oily, a thin film of scum discolouring its edges. Plunge beneath the surface,
and you would be fooled into thinking the loch was empty – too still and stagnant
to host life. It is deep, deeper than your lungs could take you, and yet nothing rises
from the depths. No bubbles of air, no animal matter, no
plant life, nothing. But your eyes deceive
you, for the loch is fuller of life than you could possibly imagine. Many lives, in fact,
comprise the silty mulch on the bed of this lagoon, tethered there by time, and the will
of the loch’s inhabitant. Out of reach of the sun’s
rays, in the furthest depths of those waters, there abides an ancient king. His throne is
made of a thousand skins, which he would wear to fool you, trick you, entice you into his
lair, his watery kingdom. Legend has it that h
e
once surfaced in his true guise, mottled fur battle-scarred, and soft-grey to the touch,
black snout wet, and pretty with whiskers, his flippers and paws padding at the peaty
earth. He came then for a woman, and made her his queen. And, as the story goes, with
her by his side his thirst for human flesh was at long last quenched, so enthralled were
they with each other’s beauty, wisdom and cunning. On the banks of a mountain
called Beinn Nam Mic Caillte lies a loch by a bothy, and every year bo
uquets of wildflower
are laid, in memoriam, by the door of the crumbling hut. And every year those mournful
flowers soon disappear. And every year, come summer, if you’re lucky enough, you might
just see petals floating atop the still surface of the loch; and if you look close enough,
hard enough, you might even see them rise from the depths, as if the world were inverted,
and they were snowflakes, fallen from the clouds. - Thank you for listening to Stories From The
Hearth. Special thanks this
month go to my good pal, Ali Begg, for help with the pronunciation,
grammar, and spelling of the Gaelic for 'Beinn Nam Mic Caillte', which means 'The Mountain
of Lost Sons'. Without him, it would have meant something very different; or, indeed,
nothing at all. With today’s story, I wanted to try my hand at horror. I've never really
written horror, and maybe that shows. I definitely tried to weave a little bit of comedic relief
into the story as well, and I also tried to write something close to
the heart. I often
try to write things as fantastical as worlds into which I can escape, as well as worlds
into which you can escape. But, for this one I wanted to write something that was familiar
to me, namely: hiking and camping with friends, and friends who are these kind of ridiculously
exaggerated Scottish characters. I wanted to also do something that was a bit of a bottle
episode, too, all happening in this one location, with real focus on the characters themselves;
especially that of th
e Selkie king, once he comes in. I really wanted to create a sense
of menace around this distortion of how he is perceived by the various characters I'd
created. Of course, I had to chuck in some drug use, too, for what good is a Halloween
story if not one in which the heroes are too inebriated to do anything about it. And, that
obviously comes into play at the end there, too, when the broadcaster uses their mushroom
use to kind of blame them - and by the police to kind of blame them - for Luka
and Maggie's
disappearance. I really hope you liked today's story. I had
a lot of fun writing it. I'm really glad I got to do something horror-themed, because
I really do love Halloween. My partner and I have spent this month watching classic Halloween
movies, decorating the apartment, and being as spooky as we can. In fact, if all goes
to plan, this morning I should be very, very hungover right now, after a Halloween party
out in Glasgow. Perhaps you are too, and that's why you're here: getting
a good story to soothe
that hungover head of yours. If you liked what you heard, please do follow
this podcast on whatever podcast app you're using, share this podcast with friends, family,
and anyone else you know who could use just a half-hour-to-an-hour's respite from the
chaos of the everyday. If you wish to support the podcast, like I said in the introduction,
please head to my Patreon by hitting the link in the description. I urge you to do this
only if you find genuine value in my art. I
'm not trying to get everyone who listens
to this thing to pay for it. It should be free, that's the point of it. But, if you
feel like what it gives you is something worth paying for, or something worth showing your
support for, then please do help me out; any which way you can helps me hugely, because
I do all of this in my spare time, whilst trying to make money through other avenues,
until this might - one day! - become it's own self-sufficient thing. Speaking of Patreon,
a further shout-out
and thank you to five more of my top-tier patrons. To Rob, Charlie,
Vivian, Sandy, and Jane, thank you all so much. If you've got any feedback, opinions, or you'd
like to get in touch, then you can check out the podcast's Instagram, Twitter, and website
via the links below. Story episodes are released once a month, with the next episode out on
Sunday the 28th of November. However, do keep your eyes out for additional episodes in my
miniseries The Wandering Bard: which is a series looking at the
history of storytelling,
and the people behind it. They are out on the second Sunday of every month. Until next
time, I’ve been Calum Bannerman, and you’ve been listening to Stories From The Hearth.
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