Spirits of Dark and Lonely Waters

"Are you listening, Ollie?" called the subconscious voice as the man stood at his bathroom mirror.

Ollie stuck a middle-aged hand into the pocket of his wool sweater and took the headache-reliever pills from it to his mouth. He always found himself downing these tablets like candy during the Offering, that once-a-decade event when the ancient voice was at its loudest and hungriest.

"I know you can hear me, Man-Thing," said the rumbling voice in his head. "Do not let it be said I have never been reasonable. I let you have the month of August all to yourself, without any of my interruptions. But now it is October, and I require your services."

Ollie shaved his white moustache and sighed. He thought back to when he had first heard the voice at age 12, and how at first it had seemed like any old nagging figment in a child's overactive psyche. But this voice answered to no one, and soon made its deadly demands very well known to its new servant.

"I have a name, you know," said the man. "And it's Ollie, not Man-Thing."

"I have employed many helpers throughout the millennia," said the ancient voice. "Some were Roman, some were Viking, some were Christian. You must not expect me to remember everyone's names at all times."

"Right, I'm sorry, then," groaned Ollie, leaving the restroom. He picked his blue park service uniform off the floor and put it on. To the public, he was simply the old groundskeeper at Caer Duggan, keeping teenage squatters out of the manor home and its accompanying lake area after dusk. Only Ollie knew of his true, arcane responsibilities to a master far older than the British government.

"What are waiting for...Ollie?" said the creature. "The trap is set. All that is left is for you to read the spell."

The beast's gravelly whisper was not in English, or at least not a form Ollie recognized, and yet he still intuitively understood it. He could tell that it was an older tongue, a rasping wail from Celtic days when the slabs of Stonehenge-like temples ran red with blood to ensure a good harvest.

As Ollie took out his car keys for a drive to the lakeside, he thought about what he was doing.

“You know, I don’t have to do this,” he said to the beast. “What do you think of that? I could just stay here and not give you your damn sacrifice. What are you going to do, yell at me? I’ve put up with your yelling most of my life.”

“That would be a very unwise choice, and you know it,” said the creature in his mind. “Your ancestors understood the consequences of missing one of the sacrifices. If I am not satiated, I can show this village storms the likes of which you have never seen. Landslides, floods, famine. Calves and children alike rendered stillborn. I can make all of this happen, and more.”

“Alright, alright, I understand,” yelled Ollie, exiting his house for the car.

“I knew you would,” said the creature. “It’s a public service you are performing.”

Within ten minutes the car pulled off from a muddy dirt road to Caer Duggan, an oasis of thick looming pines sticking out of the barren marsh countryside. On the tallest hill sat the Edwardian mansion, with a large lake right beneath it like some sort of reflecting pool. At this time of night, the water’s surface was as much of a foreboding black void as the skies above it.

Stepping out of his vehicle, Ollie took each step towards the lake with the pained deliberation of a prisoner walking down death row. Only in this scenario, he was the executioner.

“Hurry up,” commanded the ancient voice. “You must read the incantation while the moon is still highest.”

From his jacket pocket, Ollie pulled out a piece of parchment with ancient magic words inked on it. He resisted the urge to tear it to pieces.

Stepping off the beaten path, he ducked into some bushes so as not to be noticed and gazed out at the quiet lakeside. There, on the beach, were the two targets: a teen boy and girl lying on a blanket, smoking and sporadically kissing and laughing.

“The moment is now,” ordered the ancient voice in Ollie’s brain. “Read the words now, quietly, so they don’t expect anything.”

Ollie looked at the spell page and prepared to do what he had done so many times before, but felt the words get stuck on his throat. As trepidation turned to anger, he crumpled the page up and threw it into the mud.

“No,” he said. “I won’t be an accomplice this time!”

Against the ancient voice’s protests, Ollie ran out of the bushes and onto the lapping shores of the lakes, eliciting screams from both boyfriend and girlfriend on their blanket.

“You must run, for God’s sake!” he bellowed, waving arms around. “You are both about to be consumed! Leave and never return!”

“He’s insane!” shouted the girl.

Ollie picked up clumps of sand and threw it at the two teens until they began running for the hills, leaving their blanket and cooler behind.

“Get out of here!” Ollie said. “Let him take me instead of you! Let him eat me instead!”

Ollie felt an itching on the side of his worksuit pant leg. He looked down to see a tendril the consistency and color of kelp worming its way independently out of the water and onto his calves.

He turned around to see more of these evil vines rising out of the lake, ensnaring him and pulling him down into the murky depths. As the water filled his lungs before he could scream, Ollie heard the voice one last time.

“Your wish is granted.”

The young girl had gotten separated from her boyfriend in the mad dash away from the beach and was now lost on her own in the middle of a swamp thicket, missing one shoe from the chaos. She sat down on a log and began to sob to herself.

“Do not cry, child,” said a rasping whisper that popped up in the back of her mind. “I shall be your companion.”

Oh my God, she thought to herself between tears. I’m hearing voices now. I have officially lost my mind!

“You have not lost your mind at all,” the ancient voice reassured her. “I am simply employing your services. There has just been a vacancy.”