Dramatis Personae

Though there was no sign of the slightest mist, foghorns wailed balefully along the banks of the Clyde. The night, instead, was clear as ice crystal, sharp as cut glass and above the stars gleamed like diamonds. The sound was no warning but a nautical addition to “the bells” a ritual ringing out of the old and ringing in of the new, Hogmanay was over, 1973 had arrived.

Revellers up and down the city sang Auld Lang Syne at the top of their lungs. Most of them were pissed out of their minds well before the clock struck twelve. It was a night for celebration, in pubs and clubs; in flats and bedsits, in the terraced houses and the gable ends, people got together and sang, drank, told jokes and inevitably, fought.

The cops were busy that night, the troubles over in Ireland had a way of manifesting on the West Coast of Scotland, especially after a gallon of lager and so Sectarian nonsense reared its retarded head as dimwits from the same cult knocked the living hell out of each other about whether a wizard or a king should rule them.

That was how Gordon Skinner saw it. He'd been in Glasgow eighteen months but it had not taken him long to understand the local culture. Thus he understood Hogmanay was a time for opportunity. For him it was a night to both settle old scores and move up in the world. He had gathered three of his boys for the job, the only three he trusted with something so nasty. He knew he'd been making a name for himself around the underworld but after the job he'd planned he knew people would take him much more seriously.

He was going to kill the Robertson brothers, not just kill, no, he was going to fuck them up so badly that it would scare the shit out of whomever it was they were working for. Skinner wanted their territory too, they'd been slinging speed mainly, shit speed at that. Frankly, he considered he was doing their customers a favour. He'd asked around as to who they were running with but no one could give him more than a shrug and say they were not to be fucked with. That was, so he'd learned, the standing orders from the big boys, the ones who could have taken them out easily. It made no sense for those two to have such a large patch. Skinner didn't care about any standing orders. He had his own crew and his orders were to take them out and take over their streets. Whatever came crawling out to take a shot at him, if they were indeed protected, could be dealt with.

He might only have been seventeen but he'd seen and done worse than most of the Gangland bosses of Glasgow would have dared. They thought he was just some kid playing wide. They were fools. Skinner had walked the dank hedgerows and the dark hills and witnessed what festered in those barren and forgotten places. He'd seen the Auld Yins move about the streets of his home town as it went mad. Those shadow-wreathed others that bore forms similar to ours but had intentions far removed from our own. He had watched the friends he'd grown up with change, become dead-eyed dolls, pale imitations of what they were, their heads writhing with foreign things, their actions beyond chaos.

Having not taken leave of his senses he had taken leave of that accursed town. He feared nothing about Glasgow or its denizens. Simple-minded folks with simple-minded intentions. Money, fame, respect. He calculated he'd have the city sewn up in five years. He smiled to himself and looked at the boys in the van. The new year was about to ring in some new changes. “C'moan then, let's party.”

They exited the vehicle onto Vernon Road. The cottage houses were practically empty, which was good. Only the one directly across the street was occupied, there was a party going on and people were singing “Long haired lover from Liverpool” which was bad. It didn't matter, it was getting done, he was determined.

The four of them Skinner, Bryce, Lardie and Harper, marched up to the door. The window next to it had its curtains closed but the lights were on and Skinner could hear the sounds of people talking and laughing. There was music but he didn't recognise it. He nodded to Harper, who pressed on the bell.

There was some groaning and laughing from the room near them. Skinner nodded to Bryce who raised his shotgun and aimed at the window. He'd done this just in case anyone looked out to see who was standing there. No one did, someone walked down the hallway and unlocked the door, a skinny guy with glasses and blond hair looked startled as he saw the four of them. “Happy new year, ya fucker. Inside.”

“Oh you are makin' a big mistake. “ The little guy said. He shut right up when Bryce pushed the barrel of his shotgun against his eye.

“Inside.” Skinner commanded quietly. This time the skinny runt did as he was told. Dorey closed the door behind him quietly after they'd all entered the cramped hall. Skinner pushed the guy who opened the door forward and then forcefully into the main room, where there was a female gasp of shock. They followed behind all four shotguns raised, ready to paint the room red if they had to.

They were not ready for what they saw, there are some things that are impossible to prepare for. It was a standard sized living room with perhaps eight or nine people standing and sitting around the walls, smoking and drinking. There was jazz music playing and it looked quite innocent except for one detail. They had, before Skinner and his boys marched in all being watching the proceedings in the centre of the room. There was a thing, taller and thinner than a man but with the rough shape of one, save for the bark and browning leaves that covered it instead of flesh. For a head there was little but a mis-shapen knot of wood from which burned two pale blue eye-lights. The thing had, around it's simulacrum of a waist, a kind of black leather tool-belt apron affair which held a variety of knives, scalpels and other sharp surgical equipment, some of which looked exotic and vicious. The creature was gleefully dissecting a naked, bound and gagged girl, who could have been no more than fourteen. Although several of her organs had been removed and placed beside her body, the child was still alive, her eyes rolling in agony and terror.

When Harper saw it he just said “Fur fuck sake” and fired the shotgun at the thing. The creature's left appendage burst into splinters and broke off from it's main body. It made a noise which sounded more like fury than pain and turned to look at Skinner while at the same time throwing something sharp and gleaming at him from across the room. The blade entered Harper's right cheek and scrapped across his teeth and upper gums until he spat it out with a large amount of blood. The thing, in an angry alien tongue, growled and simply stopped existing. Leaving only a dying child in the centre of the room and Harper raging to himself as he tried to stop his face from falling off.

“Whit the fuck do you cunts think you're playin' at?” shouted one of the people in the room. Skinner recognised him by his long red hair, Georgy Robertson. He'd never met the guy before but all the descriptions matched. “D'you huv any fuckin' idea who that wis?”

“Keep yer trap shut ya sick cunt.” Skinny replied. “Aw of ye, oan the fuckin flair”

The people in the room made noises of inconvenience rather than mortal fear but they did what they were told. Skinner looked them over and recognised none of them, though one did look like the spitting image of the Lord Provost. Only Georgy and his brother Donny stood out. “Alright, so whit is aw this sick shit aboot?” He asked.

“Away an' take a fuck tae yersel' ya wee dick.” Georgy responded which earned him a solid whack with the butt of Shotgun.

Skinner aimed his at Donny. “You goat anythin' tae say Donny boy?”

“Aye. You're fucked. That wis wan o' The Sisters familiars. This is yoor mess noo ya wee prick. Mollah Crieve Doo!” Donny said. As he did everyone else in the room repeated it. It took Skinner a second to notice they were all doing something with their tongues. There were several quiet cracks and within seconds everyone in the room was twitching on the floor, turning blue and foaming at the mouth.

“Whit the fuck?!” Bryce exclaimed.

“Disnae matter, let's get oot o' here.” Skinner said.

He was nervous then, the new year had rung in some changes, but not the fortuitous ones he expected. The last words of Donny Robertson settled matters, he did not know who the sisters were, but he guessed as to what they were. Robertson's last words were a phrase he'd heard before, often, back in Dunnoch, when the Auld Yins came and soured the town. “Moladh Crom Dubh”

The sisters were Auld Yins, and they were running Glasgow, behind the scenes. These thoughts weighed heavily on his mind as they left the flat and drove off into the morning cold and the dark of the new year. Being boss was going to be tougher than he expected. They got in the car, determined to drag Harper off to the Royal. Bryce had latched onto the word “cult” somewhere and kept repeating on confirming that “they” were a cult, “a fuckin' cult.”

They belted through the city streets, Lardie almost ran right over a couple of teddy-boys at the Gallowgate and the car screeched, he turned off onto High Street but suddenly growled. “Whit the fuck?”

Skinner looked up. Dark, trees, no shops, no streetlights, they were not on the High Street, he wasn't even sure they were still in the city. Ahead of them was just a long, long black road, hills and more trees. “Did ye take a wrang turnin'” he asked.

“How the fuck could I huv?” Lardie barked back, terrified and aggravated.

Quickly, too quickly, the pale freezing fog came down around them, he thought he could hear whispers and see shadows, dark feminine shapes, large and fleeting in the thickening gloom outside.The engine stopped and the car trundled to a halt. Before any of them had the chance to speak all four doors clicked in unison and swung open. The icy cloud poured into the vehicle. Skinner felt its crushing biting cold as everything faded to grey.

“You owe us.” whispered a voice somewhere. The voice had a delectable lilt to it, like that of a girl from the highlands, a singing giggling voice. “D'ye no?”

Skinner could see nothing, he was being suffocated, no, constricted by the fog which was now not so much cold as the utter life erasing absence of heat. As he struggled to keep conscious all he could think of to say was “who ur ye?”

“Cailleach. Which one of these shall we take tonight?”

In his mind's eye he could see them, all four of them standing in the road and then that is exactly where they were. Harper was looking in bad shape, Bryce looked out of his mind with fear and Lardie, stupid Lardie, took it all in his stride, even lit up a cigarette. From out of the darkness she came, a wail that churned and sculpted the fog into a shape, a woman, a pale white ancient hag. She had no eyes and was naked. Her wild white hair seemed to take on a life of its own and hovered amongst the freezing air.

Skinner felt himself clench, from teeth through stomach to anus, without moving she was upon him, draping herself over him. The figure could have been eight feet easily, he felt like a child as her cold, cold, cold hands ran down his cheek. “You take one of oors, we take one o' yours.” she sang.

Lardie yelped as the great ghostly woman suddenly appeared in front of him. “This wan will dae, this time.”

Her large hand covered his head like she was holding an orange, he screamed for a second but a deep and resounding crack from deep within him. It boomed through his chest and then Lardie was no more, just a limp carcass which the woman dragged off into the mists. Just before for she vanished she turned and smiled. “Happy new year Gordon.”

Then there was nothing but the hollow dismal wail of her keening, resounding throughout the grey landscape like foghorns ringing in the changes.

What else could he say? “Aye, Aw the best, Auld yin.”