Far Liath Weather

Sequel to Curiosity Killed The Rat



Nate Welsh didn’t mind the fog, but this particular fog made him uneasy. It moved disturbingly like a living intelligence, the long fingers of fog seemed to have an oily consistence as it reached out and caressed his face. It spun in great, towering spirals as it retreated before him, only to suddenly close in and envelope him.

Dimly ahead, he could just make out the lights of the other investigative team. Toward the west, the soft murmur of the ocean, and the continuous mournful drone of the fog horns.

Grimacing, he pulled the hood of his slicker further over his hairy ears, while moisture dripped from his long aquiline nose. His eyes narrowed slightly as he carefully regarded the ground visible in the narrow beam of light cast by his electric torch.

Gray Man Weather, he thought as he recalled the stories that his grandfather had told him in his primary school days. When a thick, blinding fog swirled around the houses and trees in corkscrew spirals and when its long tendrils felt like solid moist fingers when it brushed your face and hair, that was a sure sign that the Far Liath, as he was sometimes known, was about. Once a pagan weather god worshiped around 1500 b.c. in the coastal communities in and around Ireland and Scotland, he had been demoted to fairy status with the arrival of Christianity. However, this former god showed no sign of fading away and for matters only known to him, decided to emigrate to the States where he took on a modern-day form that now had a big following among the coastal towns and villages of Northern California, Oregon and parts of Canada, who also went by names of the Gray Lurker, Grimmin or the Grey Gentleman. But regardless of what he was called now, it didn’t change the fact that the Far Liath was a highly dangerous entity who hated any mere mortals and took great delight in inflicting much death and misery among them.

His grandfather had assured him that he had nothing to fear from The Gray Man since Welsh was of the Old Blood. A Wehr: one of the True People, and not one of those Humes who worship and follow the Bureaucratic Control God of Endless Torment and False Hopes. But young Welsh wasn’t so sure, having heard enough gruesome Gray Man stories to acquire a persistent fear of thick, gray mist and silvery, opaque sunglasses.

The hair on the nape of Nate’s neck bristled as he suddenly remembered Behr’s expression of stark terror.

Was there possibly an unearthly explanation to the tragedy that befelled the Chalmers family, and an even more unimaginable one that quite possibly claimed hundreds more?

Wehr weren’t the only humanoid race to inhabit this planet with the humans. There were other sentient nonhumans, and some of them were generally distrustful or hostile toward humans, especially toward those who were of the eager, zealous, missionary variety.

The local paper almost always had some story about someone trying to peddle Christian supremacy and moralistic bullshit in the Restricted Territories, and ended up as a few pickled parts in a jar.

It disturbed him greatly that people still choose to disobey the rules of proper conduct. Crossing over the borders of Faerie without authorized permission was risky enough, trying to ram the Gospel down the throats of Otherworldly Nations was inexcusably stupid.

Obviously the Chalmers had pissed off someone majorly to get themselves mutilated and burned up like that. But why the hell would the Sidhe (if they were responsible) do something like that to the kids. They raised any children they captured on raids to ensure the survival of their diminished race; blonde children were especially popular. Wiping out potential genetic material? It doesn’t make any sense...unless it wasn’t the Sidhe.

He got that scalp-crawling feeling as he passed into the looming forest, as though he was being followed. He always had that feeling whenever he was walking in this type of weather. One of the penalties, he guessed, from living in a town that seemed to be a daily hotbed for otherworldly weirdness.

Of course, he wasn’t being followed. It was all just his imagination.

He tried walking at a good pace, but then suddenly stopped and pricked his ears. He thought he heard the slow shuffle, shuffle of footsteps. Welsh pulled his hood down for better listening and tried to concentrate. Then he felt something cold and soft touched the back of his neck and he jumped, yelping. Hands shaking, he slowly puts his fingers to his nape and they came away with a huge glob of gooey, white substance. His nostrils were soon assaulted by the smell of rotting fish similar to what you might find in the dumpster behind a busy seafood market.

Okay, relax Nate, he told himself as soon as he finally recovered enough to start walking again. Just guano from a gull.

“That you, Nate?” a familiar nasally voice suddenly called out.

Through the nearly whiteout distance, hazy shapes appeared carrying flashlights.

“Yeah!” Welsh bellowed back.

One of the shapes strolled forward, materializing from the fog back as Corporal Dave Croyce. He was a tall, lanky half-elf with cheerful blue-gray eyes, but there was no smile on his thin pale face as he came over to Welsh.

“Beastly night we’re having?” Croyce slowly removed the wire-rimmed spectacles from his skinny nose and carefully wiped them with a red silk handkerchief.

“Yeah, a regular pea-souper.”

Croyce frowned as he placed his spectacles back in place and pocketed the handkerchief. “For a minute there, we thought you might have stumbled into an ambush.”

Welsh grimaced as he wiped the remaining guano onto his rain slicker. “Just got nailed by a seagull, that’s all.”

This prompted a few chuckles which quickly died when Croyce asked, “You’ve seen Behr?”

Welsh nodded. “Yeah. I’ve seen him. Poor guy was rambling on about some ‘abomination of abominations,’ and that I shouldn’t go into ‘that festering hell pit.’”

“Pretty much sums up the description,” Croyce muttered as he and his fellow officers led the way through the banks of fog. “Ever heard of H. P. Lovecraft?”

“Never heard of him,” Welsh murmured, swatting a Wandering Titania Creeper away from his face. Bloody exotic! Wish people would stop importing these Faerie pests. “So what did this guy do?”

“One of the most influential horror writers of all time,” Croyce explained patiently. “Created one of the most intriguing and multi-layered mythos of cosmic horror literature, The Cthulhu Mythos. Not only did his work survived so long, it inspired so many other writers as well as heavy metal bands.”

“Interesting, but what does this...?” Welsh stumbled and nearly fell, and the Wandering Titania Creeper latched onto him. A lot of swearing and struggling ensured. He heard several people, Croyce included, shouted at once.

“Hey, it’s okay--it won’t hurt you!”

“Try not to struggle!” You’ll get free easier as long as you don’t struggle!”

“Don’t thrash around like that! You’ll only make it more mad”

As the small crowd converged on him, Welsh managed to break free from the vine’s embrace.

“Not the greatest introduction to the local fauna,” Croyce pulled Welsh out of grab range. “Really sorry about that, I should of explained earlier.”

“It’s not your fault,” Welsh muttered, still casting a glowering eye toward the still squirming menace. “Blame the idiot who decide to plant this arboreal assassin so near the bloody foot path!”

“A lot of the Nye Am and Elven people use this plant to defend their property around here,”Croyce explained as soon as they resumed their walk. “Far more sightly than a barbed-wire fence and far less demanding than a dog.” “Rather bloody stupid, if you ask me,” Welsh snorted before changing the subject. “So what’s Lovecraft got to do with anything?”

They were now plodding the way through the nightmarish tangle of unpruned willow branches and neglected vegetation.

Welsh thought it resembled something out of one of those Arthur Rackham illustrations. All that was missing were the little buggy-eyed gnomes and trolls peering out of every nook and cranny.

“Well, a consistent theme in his stories is that humanity occupies only a very small portion of the universe, a fleetingly pointless and insignificant bleep when compared to the infinity of time and space...”

“Like most elves, Croyce had a penchant for waxing poetic and drifting into philosophical musing rather than getting straight to the point.

Welsh frowned as he pulled up his hood again. “That’s nothing new. We’re not the only earth in this space-time continuum. We got communist cat people living next door as well as tentacle-haired monster clowns and Steampunk British Imperialists. The only reason they haven’t invaded yet is because the forces of Faerie and Hell keeps them in line.”

Croyce’s antenna eyebrows swayed as he shook his head. “No, I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the Things On the Outside. Outside the dimensional branches, twigs and roots of the Yggdrasil space-time, there are terrible Things lurking in wait.”

“What? Like demons?” Welsh inquired.

“No,” Croyce replied with another shake of his antennae. “Worse, far worse. Older than the Known Worlds, older than the entire universe possibly.”

Welsh frowned even more. You’ve got to freaking kidding me, man! No life form can be that old!

“If they ever break through, they would overrun the entire planet, wiping out all intelligent life in the process!”

“Kind of like those aliens in Independence Day?” a pixie patrolman interrupted.

“Aye, but more like a force than anything breathing and living,” Croyce answered. “Things like that got no business being in our material universe, and only the very stupid and very evil ever try calling Them into existence.”

“You thinking the Chalmers were cultists?” Welsh asked.

“Maybe,” Croyce shrugged. “Still too early to say for sure, but given the things we found so far...it wouldn’t surprise me that they were involved into something...a little less family friendly.”

“What things exactly...Behr said there were bodies--hundreds maybe, unless he was exaggerating.

“He wasn’t,” Croyce replied somberly. “It’s pretty bad...something straight out of a horror movie.”

Welsh stared at the half-elf, eyes narrowed. “How bad exactly? Like bloody outright butchery?”

Croyce cleared his throat hesitantly. “Well, that’s the most puzzling bit. Not a trace of blood to be found anywhere. Yet all evidence seem to indicate that the killing took place there and that the victims weren’t killed elsewhere and then deposited at the location.”

Welsh nodded. “Like those cattle mutilations down at Roswell?”

“Not quite,” said Croyce quietly. “Those cows all died from natural causes and then the predators(buzzards, blow flies, ghouls, whatever) came along and chowed down. That’s all. That’s all. No dopeheaded Satanists, no half-assed alien surgeons. No Agent Smith or Men in Black. No sinister government conspiracies, just natural forces at work.

“Whereas those people suffered the most painful and most hideous unnatural death imaginable.”

He looked across the clearing they just entered at the triangular brick building jutting from the side of a small grassy hill. Yellow crime scene tape encircled the property. A tall, lean, sandy-haired man with Amish sideburns was busy talking to a huddle of people in hazmat suits.

Welsh felt his insides turn to ice. He turned back and looked at Croyce. “You didn’t mention a biohazard risk.”

“Something new has apparently has come up,” Croyce replied with a daze shake of his head. “Maybe after what happened to Behr, the Sheriff’s not taking any more chances.”