Echoes of Ceotir

The summer sky paled and darkened as the colours of the world washed away until it resembled a winter’s night. A boy gazed over the water, unaware of the changing light while a mist, thick as snow, fell upon the boat he sailed in. Even then it hadn’t registered that there was something wrong, something unnatural. His mind had fallen into a daze, as though the mist had clouded his consciousness, weighing down his thoughts and feelings. He was not alone, for everyone else on the deck seemed to be experiencing the same sensation. There was no wind, no bird above, and the chatter and calls of sailors had fallen into silence so that the only sound left was the rumble of the engine.

There was a flash of light, followed by a bang that echoed across the water from the second boat that sailed with them. Another bang, screams and gunshots filled the air, shattering the silence that shouldn't have existed. Another noise rippled over the water, something unnatural—a shriek that cracked through the monochromatic world and shuddered the deck he stood on. But he couldn’t see what the cause was, the source of the sound or panic as the mist hid everything from view. He tried to move, to turn away from the flash of gunfire in the distance but his body wouldn’t listen and instead, he was stuck, staring out over the water, waiting.

“Finlay!”

The word sounded distant, called from afar and yet it was right behind him. Again, they called his name, but he couldn’t turn as he was still fixated on the other boat hidden by the mist. A large hand fell on his shoulder as the word, his name, called to him again.

“Finlay, you need to move.”

The hand pulled his shoulder and wrenched his body around so that he was face-to-face with his father. He remained unmoving, unresponsive with his mouth wide open but no words would come out in answer. He couldn't help but stand there staring as there was another gunshot, followed by another scream, but this time it was not from the boat across the water but their own.

“Demons!”

People were yelling, calling for help, and telling others to run and hide. More gunshots filled the air, and the noise grew with every moment as panic and chaos erupted but then a shriek, a piercing howl echoed over it all and made the world freeze. There was running, slipping and falling on the wet wooden deck as those without weapons, without understanding, scrambled to find any kind of safety. Another scream, not the shriek of a creature but of a woman came from beside them. His body was still not listening, not responding, not moving but he could see the woman, her hands flailed and beat at her captor with no success as it pulled her into the air.

Smoke without fire, a creature of ethereal nature, almost human-like in shape and form but without the solidity of the physical world. It had tendrils for arms that latched onto the woman and seemed to grow as they coiled around her body. It held her as she struggled, effortless and defying the lack of its physicality as another screech came from deep within its body to overwhelm the woman’s terror. Without a pause, before Finlay had registered what he was watching, his father swung his rifle around and took a shot at the creature. What should have been its head broke apart into wisps of smoke that danced as though carried by a wind that was not there. Yet the creature did not respond, it did not react until his father took another shot and pierced what remained of its head which broke away in the same strange manner.

It dropped the woman and turned towards Finlay and his father with another hideous scream that would have made him coil in fear if his body was responding. The woman crumbled to the ground, her skin blackened and broken as if burned by the creature's touch. Another shot, and then yet another towards the body of the thing in the sky as it started to move towards them. The creature's body was being torn apart from the gunfire and yet it continued to wail and scream from a place that no longer existed.

“Finlay, find your sister, get below deck and wait for me, hide.”

His father had turned to him as he spoke and urged him to run but Finlay was still unable to move, unable to act as the weight that held his mind continued to lock him in place. The woman who had fallen to the ground started to move and she cried out for help. Finlay’s father turned to her and then back to the boy, grabbing his shoulder and shaking him.

“Go!” He yelled one last time, with another vigorous shake to wake him before running to the woman.

But this time it worked, he was able to move, slow and heavy but free enough to step away and shake off the strange sensation that held him. He looked back at his father and the woman only to see that the broken demon from the gunshot was starting to coalesce once more. The ever-present screeching continued from a place that defied reason and the smoke-like fragments of its form gathered together. Finlay’s father, once again, raised his rifle to fight the thing that would not die. He wanted to call to him, to tell him to run, that there was nothing he could do but he knew better of his father and so instead turned to focus on finding his sister.

The deck was a mess of people scrambling and crawling over one another, trying to escape from a boat that had nowhere to escape to. A man ran past Finlay and jumped straight off the edge but a demon, just like the other, was there and it lifted him into the air with a similar fate that he had watched the woman endure. But the boy was powerless to help so he pushed on from the screams of pain behind him and ran towards the stairs that would take him below deck.

The chaos above was only worsened below as the narrow passages were rife with bodies, some alive and injured but many not. Every path seemed filled with terror as people stared back at the searching boy. Some would beckon him in as though they had found a safe place, while others told him to leave like he’d reveal their secret. He opened a door and found a family. The mother told him to join them but wisps of smoke seeped through cracks in the floor and walls, he shouted at them to run. They looked confused by his response until those wisps of smoke coalesced and to their horror, a demon appeared before them. He ran with screams from the family ringing in his ears. He had to find his sister, make sure she was safe, that she would be okay but in his rush, he ran into another man and was flung backwards. He crashed through a door and tumbled across the floor.

The room he fell into was large with two men, one holding a rifle like his father, a man he recognised from their village and another, a man he didn’t know, who was busy drawing chalk symbols on the floor around himself. Finlay had slipped across the floor and in doing so had smeared some of those symbols.

“Get him out of here!” The man with the chalk snapped, not stopping from his drawing. “And make sure no one else falls in here or we’re all doomed.”

The man he recognised rushed to Finlay and lifted him up. There was no malice or anger in him but he pushed the boy out of the room and closed the door with a mouthed apology. Finlay paused for a moment and stared at the door but then another loud bang came from the passage he had come from, and a bright orange glow erupted from one of the rooms.

“Fire!”

The voice followed as smoke, not from the demons, filled the corridor he was in. He turned and once more began to run through the ever-growing chaos of the boat's interior. But there was no sign of his sister, every room he entered, every place he thought she might be hiding in brought no hope or relief. Their family room was empty and there had been no sign she had been there recently or taken anything from it.

All he could do was continue along the passageway until he reached the end where he climbed a ladder that would take him back up to the deck. Pausing at the top, he peered out—the sky was still dark and the mist that covered the boats had only gotten thicker. Gunfire still ignited the air with cracks of noise and flashes of light but it had grown fewer, less frequent in number and bodies littered the floor around him. The constant wail of demons overhead came and went in volume as they moved from one side of the boat to the other, attacking and grabbing the few people left on the deck in their way.

He swallowed hard and braced himself before climbing onto the deck and running to the storeroom at the back of the boat. Sticking close to the wall he moved along to find the door and peered inside, as he did below. There were a lot of people inside who whispered for him to join but he knew within seconds that his sister wasn't there and he still had to find her. He closed the door and moved around the wall, staying close to what felt like some sense of safety compared to the open deck.

The steps at the side of the store led up to an elevated section at the back of the boat. No one else was around and he couldn’t see any reason his sister would be here, but he was running out of places to search. He climbed the stairs, looking over his shoulder every time he heard one of those screams—those shrieks that clawed at his very being but he had to press on. He stopped at the top, frozen at the sight at the end of the boat, at the end of the deck that no one else was on, that no one should be on.

His sister stood at the edge, leaning over the rail as though she was ready to climb it. Floating in front of her was a demon like all the others but this one wasn’t wrapping its tendril-like arms around her or screeching in that horrific noise. It floated there in silence, its head leaning forward as it stared into her eyes. She stared back, as though the two were having a silent conversation when everyone else was screaming and running for their lives.

“Fee—” Finlay started to call out as he stepped forward but rather than his sister turning to him, another demon appeared.

It swooped in from above and screamed as though to shatter his body with the noise. This time was different, it focused on him and not another. It moved closer, its arms outstretched. grasping at the void between them, and he could do nothing but watch as his heart pounded in his chest. The tendrils that weren't hands got closer and he stumbled back and fell down the stairs behind him. But as he fell he found himself floating, not falling but lifted into the air instead.

It was a strange feeling, almost comforting at first. Held in the air, he stared into the abyss of the creature's empty face and soon realised the same haze and lethargy was returning. The weight he felt, the pressure on his mind when the mist first appeared flooded back over him as though he was losing himself to the creature. He was fading, his mind not quite there, not quite unconscious, not quite himself, and not quite asleep but slipping into another state he didn’t understand. He looked back to his sister who now had stretched her arms up to the demon in front of her, oblivious to what was happening to her brother.

Panic overwhelmed Finlay, the sight of his sister reaching out to that monster and it in turn reaching out to her snapped him back to reality. He struggled and yelled, the strange comforting feeling of nothingness disappeared, but his battle to free himself was a pointless endeavour. His sister was not scared or in pain, she clasped the demon's tendril-like arms as though holding her best friend's hand. They rose into the air and away from the boat, not like the others but as though she was flying alongside it. He fought harder but he also realised that there was no pain, his skin didn’t burn like the woman’s and the demon, though terrifying, still held a comforting touch.

It was too much, he didn’t understand, he felt trapped, his mind struggled but the weight was ever-growing and yet his body felt nothing. He couldn't fight any more and instead fell limp in the arms of the creature that held him. He watched as the other floated upwards and away from the boat, clearing the edge and moving further until it disappeared into the mist with his sister. She was calm as she floated into the mist with the creature that perplexed and tormented him and everyone else and that in itself only brought him more fear.

A light appeared behind him, a single beam of pure white blasted up from below the deck and high into the sky. The demon that held him screeched with fury at the sight of the light that cascaded outward from that original beam. It spread over the boat to bathe it in brilliance and the creature let go of the boy who fell to the deck and rolled down the stairs. More screeches from above and all around the boat as the demons fled from the light that had now spread as a barrier and melted the mist to break them from the darkness.

Finlay cried out in pain from the fall, landing on the steps and rolling down them. The light persisted, a shield that protected them from the demons, but they left behind devastation, as dead and injured were everywhere. The boy cried out for help, cried out for someone to come to him. He wanted his father, he cried for his sister but it felt like an eternity before anyone answered. A woman he recognised knelt down to cradle his head. She reassured him with a gentle voice that it would be okay and that the barrier was in place. She told him a man, a name he didn’t recognise, had saved them. But he didn’t feel safe, and it didn’t feel okay as his previously dampened emotions from the strange demons started to wash over him.

His father appeared, calling out to him and stumbling with a slight limp that didn't slow him. The man dropped his rifle and fell to the deck beside the woman, grabbing his sobbing son and pulling him into an embrace. Finlay released the woman and clutched his father instead, the tears still rolling from his eyes as sobs of pain and fear continued to wretch their way from him.

“It’s okay, Finn, where’s Fiona, is she safe?”

The question made him stifle his tears, his breathing heavy as the image of his sister flashed in his mind. Stolen away by a demon without question or fear, without worry or pain, it filled him with despair as he looked up to his father.

“It took her,” The words were nothing more than a mumble, his mouth dry as if his tears had stolen the moisture from him.

“It took her,” He repeated as his head fell into his father’s chest and once more he cried.

His father looked up at the woman and then at the other bodies near them. Pain and fear contorted the man's face, a despair that the boy had never seen him show before. But he couldn't bring comfort nor think of anything else to say as only three words came from his broken gasps between sobs.

“It took her.”