The Night of the Fuath

THE NIGHT OF THE FUATH

By Stephen Brown

Copyright 2016 Stephen Brown

Smashwords Edition

http://www.thestephenbrown.co.uk

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Artwork Acknowledgements

The Celtic patterns used on the cover come from:

http://memories-stock.deviantart.com

and

www.brushes.obsidiaandawn.com

Check out their websites for some great stuff

For

H.P. Lovecraft

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Contents

The Beginning

About the Author

Other Works

Chosen Charity

THE NIGHT OF THE FUATH

The Tooth

The soulful sound of the church bell rang out across the paddocks as Isabelle began bringing her horses in for the night. That marked sundown, five-thirty at this time of year, towards the end of February.

Another chill day had dawned in Burley, a rambling village in the middle of the New Forest, the vast and ancient area of woodlands and heath set deep in the heart of Southern England. Isabelle had been up as normal to feed and clean out her animals before she went for a ride, and other than finding the tooth the day had played out in much the same way as any other.

Following a messy break-up with her partner, Isabelle Saddleworth had returned to the family home after six years away. Six years gone without a single word, and then turning up on the doorstep pregnant and in tears – not her proudest moment, and needless to say her homecoming had been a turbulent one.

Never on the best of terms with her mother, Isabelle had immediately come between her parents, prising apart the cracks that any relationship develops after a score or more years of compromise. Perhaps she was only used as an excuse, but whatever the cause, less than a month after her return, her mother, Mrs. Alicia Saddleworth nee Speed, had moved out and begun divorce proceedings.

Her father, Jeremy Saddleworth, was currently Professor of History and Geology at Hinton Forest College, an exclusive boarding school situated in considerable grounds a few miles outside the village. As the lawyers waged their ugly wars against each other, he struggled on through the crises by burying himself in his work. Isabelle consoled herself with her horses as she attempted to heal her own wounds as well as reconcile with herself what she had done.

As had been her usual routine since returning home, she had spent the day exercising her horses and was now clearing the paddocks of muck before bedding them down for the night. Dragging the wheelbarrow through the heavily rutted pastures, she worked fast in an attempt to keep the chill from seeping into her bones – the air cooled quickly once the evening bell tolled and the Sun sank beneath the purpling horizon.

She had been out on Rostrum, the third of her horses earlier that afternoon, giving him a nice long gallop, and with the wind whipping through her hair beneath the beautiful Winter sky she had managed to forget all her worries, even if just for that short time. She’d been riding north of the village and had gone a little off the bridleways, out across the heather about half-way between home and the old, ruined woodsman’s cottage about four miles from the house. She had enjoyed the ride immensely, but on returning home, only a few minutes after having turned Rostrum out in the field, she had noticed he was lame.

Hanging up the saddle and bridle in the tack room, she had grabbed a hoof-pick and went out to check him. There had been nothing wrong with him out on the ride and by the way he was holding his foot off the ground had made her think there must be something in it, a stone or sharp spike of gorse or something. At least it didn’t look like a tendon or anything more serious, but she had to check to make sure.

She had lifted the hoof onto her knees and sure enough, there was something sticking out of the edge of his heel. Seeing that it hadn’t gone too deep, she pulled it out; no blood. Good. This was something she could deal with herself without having to call for the vet. She had brought him back inside and washed and dressed the foot, putting him back in the stable with a kiss on the nose. Clearing away the wrappings of the poultice she had applied, Isabelle had then gone back over to where she had left the object she had pulled from his foot.

A good two to three inches long, she had thought at first that it was a sharp piece of bone, the scraps from a fox’s kill or something. On closer inspection though she saw that it was quite clearly a tooth, although what kind of animal it could have come from she could only guess.

Initially she took it to be a very large canine, but with the jagged serrations running down each long side together with its distinctly triangular shape, it looked more like a shark’s tooth than anything else - which was patently absurd here in Burley in the middle of the Forest.

Given her father’s line of work, which was also his life-long passion, Isabelle had been brought up in a house surrounded by geological specimens and unearthed keepsakes. Before moving down here to the Burley Grange, her father had previously been based at the Department of Archaeology at Royal Salisbury University and in his day had been one of the senior archaeologists involved in the 1980’s excavations carried out at the Anglo-Saxon burial site of Sutton Hoo.

While Isabelle’s knowledge was only a passing one, her father’s was exhaustive and knowing how much it would please him she pocketed the tooth to present to him later. Rubbing Rostrum’s muzzle lovingly, she had then gone to begin the clean-up in the fields. Of course it meant that the gelding would be out of action for a few days, but the main thing was it was nothing too serious, and she still had the other three to ride after all.

Equally importantly to Isabelle though, she knew that her find would please her father no end. He would love the gesture as much as the gift itself, and after all the trouble she had caused with her recent return she desperately wanted to give him something back; something to finally say thank you for his continued love and support, which had been unyielding, even in the face of all the hardships he was now being put through by her acrimonious mother.

He would love the mystery of this, she knew, and the thought of being able to brighten his day warmed her every bit as much as dragging the heavy wheelbarrow through the mud.

Finishing off her fields, she brought the other horses into their stables for the night, hayed and fed them all and went back up to the house for a bath before dinner. She placed the tooth in a tall glass in the kitchen, where she knew her father would see it when he got in.

*

Descending the stairs with a towel wrapped round her head, Izzy was unsurprised to see her father crouched on his haunches by the kitchen table, examining the tooth at eye level. He had left it in the glass where the water magnified it somewhat.

An interesting find, he said to her without looking up. I didn’t know you were going to the sea today.

I didn’t, she answered him, smiling. I found it out in the fields.

This caused her father to look up finally. In the fields? You can’t have done - this is almost certainly marine – aquatic without a doubt.

Isabelle just shrugged and rearranged the towel, telling the story of how she found it. It was sticking out of Rostrum’s foot, poor thing! Go and check the bandage if you don’t believe me.

How odd, he commented absent-mindedly. Is he ok? he asked almost as an afterthought.

Yes, he’s fine. I’ll keep it clean and give him a few days off. He should be right as rain after that.

Mmm, the Professor nodded, still intent on the object in the glass. He pulled out a chair and continued his examination of the tooth, turning the glass around minutely in his hands to stare at the specimen from all sides.

Isabelle smiled at the depth of his obsession, something she knew her mother had grown to find intensely irritating, although presumably he must have already been like that when they first met. They made idle conversation as Isabelle prepared dinner and ate discussing the trivia of the day. She could tell though that her father’s mind was already completely distracted with the tooth.

What, erm, he began hesitantly as she cleared the dishes away, what were you planning to do with it?

Stacking the dishwasher, she smiled. It’s yours. A gift - Happy February, she joked.

Well, I mean, I was only thinking that I could take it to work and maybe check up on the school’s database, maybe find out what sort of animal it comes from and how it got this far inland.

It’s yours, Izzy laughed. Take it, really.

Professor Saddleworth looked over at his daughter and smiled. He hadn’t heard her laugh in a long while. Thanks Iz. I will.

*

The next morning he checked through the school’s fossil database, but could find nothing. Further intrigued by this, he called his old tutor at the Royal Salisbury University, Professor Emeritus Alan Devizes, and arranged to go up for lunch the following day. In the afternoon, having hesitantly asked Isabelle’s permission first, he brought a group of sixth formers to the house and roped off a few small sections in one of the four small fields that backed onto the property, the one in which the tooth had turned up in. Organising the students into dig-teams to see if anything else could be found, he organised a school minibus for them for the next two days, saying he would join them in all the mud and dirt the day after tomorrow.

They didn’t find anything that first day, the professor told his daughter over dinner that night, but then he hadn’t really expected them to. Archaeology was more of a marathon than a sprint, he said. She only half listened to her father’s explanations, smiling at his boyish enthusiasm. After a few minutes when she realised he wasn’t going to stop for some time, she got up and cleared the plates, letting him talk on behind her.

***

Alma Mater

Pulling into the gravelled inner courtyard of his old alma mater, St Stephen’s College at the Royal University of Salisbury, memories flooded back into Jeremy’s head like a lush,