Trembling With Fear 2-2-25

Scones and Salvation, by Andrew Keyworth

‘Take me!’ the woman cried out, arms outstretched to the maelstrom that lashed about the clifftop, hard rain and snatching winds. A jagged spark of pink lightning briefly lit the unholy gloam and, in that moment, as though orchestrated by a twisted director, she slipped from the cliff’s edge and into the darkness below. I watched her body spin and snap like a doll as it bounced off the unyielding stone before being consumed by surging waves that flung themselves against the rocks, as though desperate to escape what was coming.

The people around me wailed in ecstasy as they bore witness to another disciple accepted into the cold and eternal embrace of Groshgaroth. They chanted His name: first a few, then hundreds, then hundreds more, until even the keening wind could not silence the devotees of the sea-risen god. I joined in with uncontrollable fervour, my body shaking, not from the cold, but from a primal euphoria that trembled the very skeleton beneath my mortal meat.

I fell to my knees, spent, fingers clawing gouges into the wet earth beneath me, oblivious to the shards of stone that cut skin and peeled fingernails from soft flesh. The rapture was here, the Apocrypha promised for so long now was shaking the earth beneath the feet of the unbelievers and naysayers. The reckoning would not come quietly for such deplorable wretches as they. Their torment would last for aeons; their servitude an eternity.

But not for us… not for His children.

I felt hands around my quivering arms, the grip delicate but firm. I allowed myself to be pulled back to my feet, though my legs could hardly take the weight. I placed my hands on my knees, unsteady in the buffeting gale. A small voice whispered in my ear, barely audible above the howling wind.

‘Do not kneel, child,’ she said, and I almost laughed aloud at those words spoken by a small girl to a grown man. ‘The Master will see it as weakness… He does not look favourably upon the weak.’

I turned to the girl, and a small, round face with ink-black eyes looked back at me, strands of wet hair matted across her forehead like the ropes of seaweed that must now be entangling the body of the woman that fell to her death only moments ago. I nodded and patted her cold, wet hand.

‘The ice-cream man is still open,’ she said, raising her voice against the storm. ‘Ice-cream will make you feel better. It makes me feel better.’

I watched her walk away, her pink hoodie and white shorts soaked through, the one shoe she wore caked in mud. She disappeared amongst the myriad black shapes that made up the gathered worshipers of Groshgaroth, silhouettes against a backdrop of flickering lightning. I wondered, briefly, where her parents were, and if she would find them. I knew that it wouldn’t matter if she did, and that small comfort gave me strength.

The ice-cream van was behind me, between the stalls and gazebos that had peddled their wares in the days leading up to His arrival. Most were now just splintered wood and torn canvas to be tossed around by the wind. The van was pink and turquoise I noticed, though rust had eaten into the metalwork. The front windscreen was crazed and crumpled, and a soft blue glow pulsed from the side hatch.

I approached, placed my hands on the countertop, and looked up into the light.

‘Ice-cream,’ I said. ‘For f-fortitude.’

Two claws – the pincers of an ancient crab, black and pitted – pulled back from the counter and were lost to the blue light and mist within the van. When one of the claws reappeared, it was holding a cone of flesh stuffed with wet meat, dark blood running down the sides like strawberry syrup. I accepted with a shaking hand, desperate to glimpse the face of my vendor, but my eyes hurt from the sickly light. I knew then I was in the presence of one of the apostles – I would see his face only in my rebirth.

I turned away, clutching my grisly treat. The serving hatch slammed shut behind me. I looked down at my hand and saw a cone of ice-cream with a chocolate flake protruding from the creamy swirls. The ground shook, pitching beneath me like the deck of a rolling ship. Screams and exultant voices rose up in unison, thunder peeled across the charcoal-grey skies. I ate my last meal like a starving dog eating its own vomit.

The time was finally here: His arrival from the eternal deep was now upon us all. I staggered towards the edge of the cliff, squeezing between swaying bodies in my desire to receive the Abyssal Death.

More bodies were falling from the clifftop now, and I found myself able to see out over the raging sea. Wraiths slipped in between the press of bodies, serpentine and shrieking; I felt their touch and the blood burned hot in my veins. I could sense the synapses in my brain spark as they connected with long-dormant cells. His awakening would be my awakening, and I saw colours manifest in the twilit sky that I had never seen before.

There came the sound of stone against stone as the cliff began to shift and the ground cracked. Out there, against the horizon, a shape of incomprehensible scale breached the water. Appendages, too immense to fathom, writhed out from the mass, seawater streaming down in a deluge.

The chanting died away, and even the storm was cowed by the sight of Groshgaroth heaving himself from the ocean.

The atonal chanting began again, and I lent my voice to the wordless song, deep and guttural. The congregation joined together as one, a single entity that moaned and swayed at the cliff’s edge. Ecstasy spread through me like warm honey as we called him forth:

Groshgaroth! Groshgaroth!

My past life was now just a jumble of fractured memories, a series of black and white images flickering on an old TV in a derelict house. I was a cocoon, and my new self was eagerly clawing at the dead skin of my old body, desperate to be born.

He moved towards us, closing the distance in a matter of minutes, baleful red eyes now lighting the space between the sea and the stars.

The impossible tentacles were now within reach of the shoreline and one of them smashed into the dark shape of the headland jutting out to the North. The impact shook the earth beneath my feet, and yet more souls fell to their glorious end. The sea exploded against the cliffs with such force that a towering curtain of water, backlit with red light, was all I could see before me.

I clutched my hair with my hands – that being all I could do to stop myself from clawing my eyes from their sockets at such a magnificent spectacle. 

I stepped forward towards the Master, towards my salvation, and raised my arms, pleading.

‘I’m ready!’ I screamed. ‘Take me!’

###

Two years earlier.

The tea shop was at the top of a steep and twisting lane that climbed above the village of Jove-on-sea. The place had been recommended by the lady who owned the hotel at which I was staying, and I spotted it amongst a row of shops, a red and white awning shading the front of the premises.

A bell tinkled as I entered, and I took a seat at one of the five or six tables within, each covered with a pristine tablecloth.

A woman – probably in her early sixties – appeared from what I assumed was the kitchen and approached my table. She wore a plain cream skirt and a knitted brown cardigan.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said cheerily.

‘Good afternoon,’ I replied. ‘A cream tea, if that would be no trouble?’ I had seen them advertised on the chalkboard outside.

‘No trouble at all,’ she said, and began to jot down my order on a small notepad that she had pulled from her cardigan.

As she scribbled away, I saw a fresco on the back wall: a squid or an octopus, maybe; it was decorated with shells and colourful stones.

‘Interesting,’ I commented, gesturing at the curious decoration.

The woman looked, pausing for a moment, almost as though she had never noticed it before.

‘It is,’ she agreed, turning back to fix me with a scrutinizing gaze. ‘Most people don’t notice it… not the first time they come here, anyway.’

I wasn’t certain if that was a compliment or a rebuke.

‘I haven’t been here before!’ I insisted with a smile.

‘Oh, I know – I would remember.’ She replaced the notepad in her cardigan pocket. ‘How long are you here for?’

‘Just tonight,’ I said.

She nodded approvingly. As she turned to back towards the kitchen, I’m sure I heard her say, ‘Long enough, child.’