Crom cruach, p.1
Crom Cruach, page 1
CROM CRUACH startled me. We might need to invent a new genre for them, like Anarcho-Folk Splatter or Lyrical Black-Metal Horror. If you don’t want to read a novella mixing ancient occult horror with modern communal politics that’s efficiently and viscerally detailed . . . well then, I really don’t know how to help you.”
—Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands
A family is found slaughtered in their home, yet their corpses still move; committed to the routine of their daily lives, heedless of their own grisly deaths. A local occultist commune is suspected of the crime. The bloody legacy of Catholicism and the dark roots of ancient paganism intertwine in the aftermath of a recent national revolution.
Welcome to the Ireland of tomorrow.
Two ex-Gardai officers, a former Franciscan monk and a young trans woman race to determine the cause of the slayings before tensions in the community boil over and kick off a new Satanic Panic, driving the tenuous fledgling nation back into the arms of the Church.
CROM CRUACH is a distinctly Irish anxiety piece about the reluctant future and repressed past of a country trying to shrug off the shackles of colonialism, wrapped in the shiny black leather of Giallo and written in a hallucinatory, poetic style fit for the fog-shrouded mysticism of the emerald isle.
“Loughcrewe plunges the reader head first into a skillful mix of folkloric, speculative and human horror. It left me breathless at every turn; afraid to turn the page, afraid not to. It’s not hyperbole to say I finished this with my mouth hanging open, my heart alight with horror and my mind afire with possibility. An incredible read.”
—Laurel Hightower, author of Crossroads and Below
Crom Cruach © 2022 by Valkyrie Loughcrewe and Tenebrous Press
All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form by any means, except for brief excerpts for the purpose of review, without the prior written consent of the owner. All inquiries should be addressed to tenebrouspress@gmail.com.
Production of this novel was made possible in part by a grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Visit https://racc.org/ for more information.
Published by Tenebrous Press.
Visit our website at www.tenebrouspress.com.
First Printing, September 2022.
The characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Print ISBN: 978-1-7379823-2-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7379823-3-3
Cover art and design by Jonathan LaMantia.
Interior illustrations by Echo Echo.
Edited by Matt Blairstone with Alex Woodroe.
Formatting by Lori Michelle.
Map by Dewi Hargreaves
Supplementary Material by Matt Blairstone & Valkyrie Loughcrewe
Printed in the United States of America.
ALSO FROM TENEBROUS PRESS:
Green Inferno: The World Celebrates Your Demise edited by Matt Blairstone
In Somnio: A Collection of Modern Gothic Horror edited by Alex Woodroe
Your Body is Not Your Body edited by Alex Woodroe and Matt Blairstone
One Hand to Hold, One Hand to Carve by M.Shaw
Lure by Tim McGregor
Dedicated to all Irish Republican Socialists who have been, are currently, or will be incarcerated by free state or British authorities.
Also dedicated to the spirit of the crossroads, who some would call The Devil.
CHAPTER 1
In a high, tamed place of power,
on a fog-strewn darkened hill,
the parish chapel burns.
Seen all the way from town,
devouring light of flames,
flickering over silent graves.
A gathering mass of figures,
masks of sackcloth, paper, wicker,
stand like a famine procession,
along a polluted river,
flowing from a dying city far away
from this rural midnight mob.
An old man in an ancient car stops along his journey home,
steps out onto cracked tarmac,
he cannot smell the fragrant night air.
Senses dulled from fags and drink,
he stares, red eyed,
down across the valley, lined with sitka spruce.
Like a beacon burns the chapel,
he balls his fists and spits a curse.
The world has left me lost and dying!
He dares not,
dares not,
think.
Miles away on down the road,
but not as far as town,
a young lad, Gearoid Boyle, asleep,
floats upward from his bed,
lit only by a crack of light.
His mother Lynda stands,
a shadow in the doorway,
eyes widening in fright.
The parish priest,
expelled,
runs from his house toward his car.
Pebbles pelting outward from the dancing shadows, set
in a blasphemous orange blaze,
the masked congregation jeers.
He had himself a gun, but he left it in the house,
couldn’t turn it on his parishfolk.
It would be right to die for christ.
And death does stalk this night.
Miles away on down the road,
but not as far as town,
along a tarmacadam path,
lit solely by the clouded moonlight
glinting off a butcher’s knife,
gripped by black gloved archetypal death,
indeed does stalk this night.
Lynda racing down the stairs,
lightbulbs flickering overhead.
She wants to scream, but breath is caught,
an image burned into her mind,
of a boy,
unhooked from gravity.
The lights go out and her foot misplaces,
gravity still her master,
and she falls
to the cold tiled floor of the hall.
By the front door,
an apparition in the dark,
marked by ice blue glowing eyes,
a phantom hag.
Its outline visible to Lynda’s streaming eyes
even in the pitch black freezing,
Lynda screams,
stirring Padraig.
She hears him bolt awake in frantic panicking, upstairs.
The hag is gone, the lights back on
Lynda’s lying on the floor
pain coursing through her lower body
and the front door handle turns.
He stands outside,
figure in black.
Nowhere near the door,
between the pillars at the driveway’s end.
Gloved hand outstretched
and grasping, turns
the mechanism of the locked front door
releasing to his will at distance
as firefighting volunteers
start arriving on the scene
of the burning of the church.
They fight the blaze,
the masked marauding band long gone,
now only a gaggle of onlookers remain.
A cry is heard from the roadside,
exalted on a cloud of weed smoke,
“It’s about damn time!”
And a ways on down the road, but not as far as town,
the dark stranger in his coat and hat
fills the frame of the front door,
as Padraig barrels down the stairs,
his trusty hurley in his hand,
he takes a mighty swing
to no avail.
The weapon splinters as it hits,
So unbothered is the dread intruder
that the hat stays undisturbed
upon his head.
Cold leather glove on Padraig’s throat,
pressure applied to crush the trachea,
and steel, in rapid thrusting motions,
breaks his flitting eyelids.
Jabbing into jelly,
left right left right
drop
he hits the floor.
And Lynda’s crawling now.
Fingers reach across the threshold
of the door,
touch the bristles of the mat,
when the killer’s heavy boot
comes slamming down upon her skull.
Brain to leaking pulp,
Bone to splintered shards.
A headless body at the open door,
eyeless one upon the stairs.
No trace of any killer,
Gearoid’s room sits dark and still
as embers of the blazing church sing smoke into the clouds.
Above the county they call Cavan,
regal Meath’s sinister twin,
where ancient bogland rots in silence
over sunken burial mounds.
CHAPTER 2
There’s sunlight streaming in now
from the Boyles’ open door,
down the stairs from landing windows,
and through the archway of the living room,
with its cheap wall-mounted flatscreen
and its fancy leather couch.
Lynda and Padraig have gone missing,
but the pulp and blood’s still there.
Standing in the hallway, a pair of uniformed Gardaí.
A grizzled older fella, jaw set, shotgun in his hand
and a younger chap,
young Fine Gaeler head on him, of course,
grips a metal bat,
not looking all that brave or confident
this morning.
The radio is on,
the sound drifting from the kitchen.
“Hello, Lynda, Padraig? Gearoid?
Anyone around?”
The older fella, Marco, calls out,
receiving no response,
from the still, bucolic house,
as robins trill their song outside.
“We should call for backup,”
Iarla, the younger Garda suggests.
“What backup could there be?”
“You know, Terry and the boys?”
“We don’t need those cunts.
We’re still the police, now check upstairs,
I’ll check the kitchen.”
“I don’t wanna go up there alone, Marco.”
Marco grunts and offers his gun to his young and worried ward,
who hesitates, the balance of their microcosm off.
The bigger, gruffer man passing the superior arm to him?
“Hand me that fucking bat,”
He growls and Iarla takes the gun,
“And get up them fuckin’ stairs.”
They go their separate ways.
Iarla, shaking, up the steps,
trying not to look down
at the dried black bloody streaks
of last night’s gore.
Marco steps into the living room,
which reeks of potpourri,
and notices a faint trace
of bloody footprints on the floor.
They trail across the carpet,
lead to a half opened doorway,
tiled floor visible on the other side.
Marco guesses it’s the kitchen.
A sudden THUNK from that room,
the forceful slamming of a cupboard door,
confirms two things for Marco
that he’s not all that pleased to know.
The first thing being—yes, it’s most probably a kitchen,
and the second being—no, he and the boy are not alone.
“Ah Jaysus,”
Marco mutters to himself,
regretting handing off his weapon to the younger lad upstairs,
who himself has heard
the eerie thumping coming from the kitchen,
but his orders given stand,
and he fears the reprimanding
that Marco would administer
if he dallied from his task.
So he moves toward a landing door that’s open but a crack,
a bookshelf he can see and blood
spattered on the floor
as if some animal or . . . otherwise
had been butchered in that room.
Worse still he hears a sound
just beyond the limits of his sight.
A squeaking, like an office chair.
He grips his shotgun tight.
Downstairs Marco,
rounding toward the kitchen,
is aware of an unsettling sound of
sloshing, spilling liquid
around the corner.
He finds himself surprised to see
Padraig Boyle, in his underwear,
blood caked across his pallid skin
pouring milk into a china bowl.
Cereal boxes overturned,
shreddies scattered on the counter,
milk overflowing from the brim of Padraig’s bowl,
and Iarla screams upstairs, diverting Marco’s attention.
He looks back for a moment
and when his sight returns to Padraig
the man of the house is facing him,
pouring milk onto the floor.
His eyes are gone,
the sockets shredded,
skin as pale as death, as milk.
“Padraig, what happened to you?!” Marco cries out
as Padraig lumbers, blind, toward him,
scooping up his heaping bowl of cereal
on the way.
There’s a chill off him, like a freezer’s open door.
Marco flinches in revulsion,
sidestepping Padraig as he shambles past
paying Marco no attention.
“P-padraig?”
Iarla’s storming down the stairs
calling Marco’s name, hysterically,
about to burst in and see
the eyeless body of a murder victim
flop down onto the couch,
spilling shreddies everywhere,
and fumble for the remote control
like he was never even killed.
CHAPTER 3
The morning dew settles
on a blackened,
burned out fire,
in the middle of a field,
littered with cans
and empty bottles.
Goran’s back at the barbeque,
with fish caught from the lake, sizzling.
Despite the morning after vibes
the session’s still ongoing.
Fionnuala’s got the aux cord,
and the PA on the pallet stage
is blaring out the techno.
The people snoozing
in their tents,
are too chemically obliviated,
for the noise to wake them
from their slumber.
Podge Dunne and Oisin Hall
are throwing shapes
beside the barn,
jaws going ninety miles a minute,
last men standing,
undead shades.
Fionnuala’s face
has spittle caked
into the corners of her mouth.
Pale, greasy,
mobile phone DJ,
in the dim and hazy
light of another
abominable Monday.
Not a single brain cell left among them,
or those inside the tents,
or over at the Commune house,
bar those who had the sense to go to bed.
And there along the path,
down from the farmhouse,
comes a white van out through the mist
up to the barn.
It’s Gerry and his aul boy Tom.
Podge grins and waves,
he saunters over,
somehow still
a little compos mentis,
but poor Oisin,
dead man standing,
barely upright but still grooving
to the beat set by Fionnuala
until she switches, callously,
to a new tune,
breaking the mood
and snapping Oisin
from his waking fugue.
He stands and looks at her aghast:
“Hey I was really into that.”
She shrugs
and Oisin blinks, one eye at a time,
as Podge lights up another herbal fag
and nods his head to Gerry who emerges
from the van.
“Well lad how’s she cuttin’?”
Podge Dunne cheerily exclaims.
“If yer not too shpaced out from last night would ye give us a hand loading up some hay?”
Gerry asks.
“No bother hai,” Podge pipes back. “Is that your auld lad with ya there?”
“Aye, lookin forward to seeing the back of him but it does him good getting some fresh air.”
“As sure he’s a sound chap,”
Podge remarks,
“Morning Tom!”
Old white haired Tom waves lazily.
He’s out, stretching the legs,
marvelling at the carnage
left by the revelry last night.
He eyeballs Oisin and Fionnula,
who cuts the tunes and calls it quits.
“Alright, an old white man’s staring,
taking this as a sign to go to bed.”
Oisin looks back at Tom,
who, in his Sunday best,
Seems to be regarding the young Fenian
with disdain.
Or maybe it’s just Oisin,
projecting paranoia
from deep inside his own
misfiring, speed-fried,
lizard brain.
“Do ya know Thin Lizzy do ya?” Tom asks with a half smile.
“Huh?” Oisin replies,
wondering if Tom’s asking if he knows Thin Lizzy
just cause he’s black?
Old guys are weird.
“Are ye on the beer, young lad?” The old man asks,
changing tack, but smirking gnomishly.
“Hell yeah I’m on the beer I’m on . . . all kindsa shit, wait . . . Who are you?”
Tom laughs and Goran, the early bird, calls out,
“Breakfast’s up, for those awake who want to have some eats!”
Then, over from the house across, a sudden distant bellowing.
