Everyone loves getting gifts and presents for Christmas. We may talk up the food, drink, and company, but who amongst us can resist tearing into some wrapping paper and hopefully discovering something awesome, like a big box of Warhammer?
The expectation and receiving of gifts at Christmas has been used as fuel for many a morality tale or parable, and today’s Grotmas Calendar entry follows suit in festive spirit. Welcome to the village of Dremmsham in the days before Hallowswatch Night, where a few people, unhappy with their lot in life, make demands of the Great Grandfather of Ghyran…
THE MERRY FATE OF DREMMSHAM
So it was that in deep Evenswinter, when the frosts settled upon the small Verdian village of Dremmsham just north of the River Resurgence, that a most curious, grim and cautionary parable did play out.
Thanks and merriment abounded, for the villagers had survived the plague season, and unwelcome Graftsday had passed also. Now beckoned Hallowswatch Night, where the skeletal image of Father Decrepita would be burned in effigy and the villagers would share wine, pickled herring and smoked elk hearts around tables wrapped with holly and stagsbane flower, giving praise to the gods for Year’s Beginning.
Yet also in Dremmsham were those whose souls bore bitterness. Rather than take comfort in what they did possess, they entertained only spite over what they did not.
First was the maiden Clodagh. She was deeply besotted with the miller’s son, Fionn. Yet her father, whom she believed had become quite the fogey in his dotage, had heard of the boy’s untrue nature, and he loved her too much to grant his blessing to such a match. When the villagers gathered round the Hallowswatch Cedar to share glad tidings, she secretly prayed that her father’s mind might alter – or else, that his permissions might no longer be required.
Next were the youths Bran, Corm and Brenna. They had fallen foul of their tutor, the old preacher Maeve, who was liberal in wielding her black birch-branch to punish their many cruel pranks about the village. They scorned her good works, naming her a tyrant for chastising their wild impulses. It was one chill morning, flesh smarting as they collected nuts to toast on the Hallow-hearth, that they heard elder militiamen mutter of the ‘Grandfather’. With the wilfulness of the young, the three wondered whether this Good Grandfather – for there were many such old gods of Ghyran – might favour their case. That night, as they knelt before their beds to hail the God-King, they instead appealed to this patriarch that he bring Maeve good cheer – yet solely so they might be free to do as they pleased.
Last of this triumvirate was the widower Aengus. His wife had been taken in the plagues, and vindictive despair had nestled in his heart. Each day he cursed all gods and sundry. He cursed them for their faithlessness, their spite – and, most offensively of all, their lack of creativity in piling woe upon an old man. Each seventh hour he cursed them anew, and he turned his tirades onto those who brought him food and company for no reward.
Now, in the days leading up to Hallowswatch Night, strange and unwholesome occurrences abounded. First came while wassailing, with hymnals sung to entreat the coming year’s seasonal spirits. Amongst the singers was Clodagh, who brooded upon her apparent deprivation. Into her voice she poured venom. As she did, to cries of revulsion, wriggling slugs and buzzing flies began to spill from the mouths of her fellows. Only when Dremmsham’s precious supply of Aqua Ghyranis was supped on did this cease – yet Clodagh felt only deeper bitterness, for Fionn took great effort in comforting her comely neighbour, Saorsa.
’Twas tradition in this season that Dremmsham’s cattle would be given the best feed of the year, and so Bran, Cormac and Brenna brought them fine oats and haylage. But to their horror, this became writhing maggots in the beasts’ mouths, and lesions opened upon the cattle’s swelling flesh as they yowled and frothed. Maeve believed them not, considering this some wicked prank, and whipper-snap went her birch.
Last was on the day of guise-dancing, when the folk of Dremmsham would don likenesses of the deepwood spirits and dance gaily to placate them. Aengus refused to partake, for he cursed these life-imps too for not favouring him with special protection. Yet as he watched the dancers, he gaped in horror as each of their masks malformed into the mouldering corpse-face of his wife – and with each clap of cymbal, they rotted further. He screamed until his voice was hoarse, yet no other saw this ghastly sight.
Hallowswatch Night was, then, a muted affair. Within the village hall, a hearth fire was set to burn, yet hearts were dull. Voices mumbled of a curse. Present too were our unhappy trio – yet, even now, each thought only of their own wantings.
Suddenly, the log upon the hearth fire began to burn a sickly green. Noisome stenches laced the smoke, and from the shadows echoed loathsome skitterings and strange giggles. Beyond the hall’s windows, a huge, worming shape slithered. All heard a clinking – of bells, perhaps, belonging to some kindly wood-nymph in a mood of giving?
Then, at the door, there came a tapping. Three, then three, then one.
The oaken portal swung ajar, and in he strode. He was portly, and hooded, and leant heavily upon a great and gnarled stave. And the clinking was now revealed not as bells but rather as vials and potion-glasses, hung all a-clatter about his person. Seven steps did he take before stopping and wheezing, spilling drool that ate through the wooden beams of the floor. He grinned, and that grin was black and rotten and writhing.
‘Greetings, my merry friends!’ said the figure, bowing low. ‘Ye may call me Father Leech. I come in the name of my Grandfather, and yours also. For some amongst ye have asked for gifts yet know not to whom such requests ought to be addressed. A permissible error, for ye are not taught! Aye, and there also be some of ye,’ his voice turned severe, as he looked upon the quivering Aengus, ‘who have been given gifts and yet not appreciated this kindliness.’
‘First, the maiden.’ Father Leech wiggled mottled fingers, and a wail went up from Fionn and from Clodagh’s father. They fell to the floor amidst gasps and screams, eyes rolling back and bile flowing from mouths quickly shedding teeth. Their limbs mutated and swelled, even as the rest of their bodies withered; they crawled over to the weeping Clodagh, seizing her limbs, their black nails digging deep into her flesh as they became cyst-like homunculi enveloping her in a conjoined mass. Father Leech nodded and chuckled. ‘Thou desired their attention, or else to control their sensibilities – and so thou wilt bear them, and not the reverse.’
‘Next, the fair youths.’ Father Leech muttered seven jolly syllables, and at the seventh spilled forth a screech of laughter from Maeve. Laugh and laugh she did, until she collapsed onto the ground, though her eyes remained wide and terrified. Her sides split and bled pus, and from the shadows gamboled tittering daemon imps who carried black-birch flails to beat her, and these wounds too bled filth. ‘Come, my young friends! Witness her chortling murrain! Will ye not join her mirth?’ But, weeping in terror, Bran, Corm and Brenna would not – and Father Leech frowned.
‘Lastly, our widower.’ He beat his staff upon the ground thrice. Slick tentacles burst from the floor to seize Aengus and drag him forth. Father Leech had unstopped a vial and tilted it to spill into Aengus’s fearfully gaping mouth. Immediately a terrible shudder seized him; leeches slithered from beneath his flesh to eat his eyeballs, and pustules and buboes blossomed, each full of grubs.
‘For thee, I bring a most special gift,’ Father Leech said, voice full of reverence. ‘This be the Rot, Grandfather’s finest brew. Now thy soul may travel to His Black Manse and take up thine umbrage with Him in person.’ Then he looked upon the room, where each man and woman’s expression was paralysed in fearful disgust, and he spread his arms wide.
‘Rejoice, my friends! Rejoice in the gifts these souls have been given! All made their wishes, and all were provided – for Grandfather is doting and knows your secret heart. Now then… let us see what gifts I might have for all of ye…’
Behind him, the hall’s door slammed shut. As it does, let us consider the lesson of Dremmsham, this cold winter’s night: It does not do to dwell overmuch upon one’s wishes and neglect what we already have in hand, for strange forces might hear and grant what we believe we desire, yet in ways unlike what we might have hoped…
A jolly lesson for us all there. We’ll certainly be keeping our mouths shut if we unwrap any socks this year. Unless they’re Squig Slipper Socks, in which case we won’t need to feign mirth at all.
Now that the gift giving is done, the smell of a feast is wafting through the air – but what’s that strange, acrid undercurrent? Drop back in tomorrow when dinner is served…
Catch up on the Grotmas Calendar
see all
