THE LAST LORD OF MISRULE

The old Don was fed up with Christmas before it had even begun. The colleges were closed, the porter's retired for the holiday and the cathedral bells were peeling their excited news all too raucously for his ancient ears. The Medievalist in him had darkened his indulgent heart.

Stooped under the eves of the public house he'd just frequented for a half stout the aging professor wrapped his overcoat tighter round his frame and headed out into the sleet of that December's Christmas storm.

"No newspapers, no new tomes, it's a waste of valuable time!" he grumbled as the shops' lights went out one by one for the start of Christmas Eve night.

With no great hurry he shambled like a tramp through the frightful wind, now dashed with snow, ambling towards his rooms in the old quarter near the Bishop's palace.

"I hope he melts! I can't wait to get home to my books and forget your modern Christmas!" the peevish soul remonstrated with a group of loud children constructing a snow man in their front garden. The reflection of the fairy lights of their gorgeous tree painted his twisted face in reds, blues and yellows.

"Look! A funny old goblin!" they shouted at the crooked man, "A Christmas devil!"

"A devil eh! I'll give you devils! Damn you and your snowman!" the bitter old fool bellowed as the children's mother came out to see what was going on.

The ancient scholar shuffled quickly away tutting to himself and casting all and sundry whom he passed curses and misfortunes.

At the corner of the square, one usually draped in shadow, a small shop remained brightly lit when all the others were now dark and closed for the holiest of nights. The old man had never noticed it before and paused to take a look before the final push through the ice and snow to his quarters.

The window was stuffed with curios and junk from every corner of the world and every age of man. There were spears, drums, toy trains, vases, silver teapots, rusty keys, gilt trays, doubloons, a lilting milk churn and countless more objects rejected by times gone by and accumulating here in this cobwebbed depository.

Experiencing an uncommon urge to look closer the old don entered the establishment. He stamped his shoes on the mat ridding them of filthy snow and shook his mohair hat. There was no proprietor evident so he walked right in and began to browse the piles of bric a brac. 

Suddenly he saw something. Something vaguely familiar. It grabbed his whole attention and he stared with fascination at an object standing at the back of a dusty dresser. It was a ceramic figurine of two boys stood next to each other, one older and taller dressed in dashing garb, wide velvet cap and tights with a huge halberd in his hand  and a smaller child adorned in similar but less extravagant attire. The old fellow was mesmerised.

"A fine and unusual piece isn't it!" said a crackly voice from behind him.

He turned face an old crone with a warty nose and a hairy chin. She smiled a toothy smile revealing alternate blackened teeth.

"What is it?" asked the professor, half-knowing the answer already.

"Ah! Curiosity has the better of you I see! It's a rare thing called the Last Lord of Misrule and his Page".

"How much?"

"To you Sir, thirteen pounds".

"I'll take it!"

The old crone wrapped the figure carefully is some fading newspaper and handed it across the counter.

"How old is it, the figure?" asked the Don as he opened the door to leave.

"At least five hundred years old to this very day!" she cackled and closed the shop turning out the lights.

Intrigued the don retired to his rooms and fingered the figurine with growing fascination. He had something like it already, a large ancient statue of the medieval, gigantic and deformed Pope of Fools.

"I can't believe my luck! Another one!"

He poured himself a sherry and stared at his purchase as it glinted in the firelight from his hearth.

Suddenly starving, he took a wrinkling apple from the bowl and began to peel it with a sharp kitchen knife. He stood over the figure immersed in its ancient glaze.

He suddenly cut his thumb deeply.

"Damn it!"

Blood bubbled out and trickled down his hand and dripped onto the figurine below, where it filled a small depression at the feet of the two boys. 

All at once there was a loud crack and a blast of light blinded the old man. The statue appeared to explode and the room convulsed in a dense rank fog, which stunk to high heaven.

The don retched clutching his throbbing thumb, blood steeping from his wound.

As the mist receded two huge figures stepped out of the murk, the two boys from the figurine, now life-size and very much alive.

The professor cowered as the taller of the two hefted his halberd and jabbed it at the throat of the old man.

"Who be you?" the boy bellowed.

"I'm the professor"

"Where is this? And When? Speak!"

"It's the old City. It's Christmas, 2021."

"Tis Christmas after all! D'ya hear that lad! We've landed on our bastard feet!"

The smaller of the two boys stepped forward. He wore a long jester's hat and carried a bore's head under his arm.

"Tis my Lord! Five hundred year we've slept. Our time has surely come again!"

The old scholar shivered but plucked up the courage to ask the apparition a question.

" And who are you Sir?"

"Why I am Lefwinus, the last of the glorious Lords of Misrule and this be here Odelgarde my faithful page."

"What do you want with me?"

"We want nought from thee old codger, you gave us life! But be warned, t'will be the bloodiest Yule you can envision, a festival of death, an orgy of anatomy but whence we're done you can be King of Reason and rule those cunts we've left!" roared the Lord of Misrule as the two figures smashed through the window and flew into the night.

The old man ran to the shattered pane and peered into the dark.

"God Almighty! What have I done!" he moaned into the infinity of Christmas Eve's sacred sky.

At the end of the road the Bishop's Palace was in full swing for the grand masked ball, a witty nod to the hoary past of the City and a fulsome fecund feast for the present incumbents of high office in the burgh.

Everyone was there; the Mayor, the Aldermen, the Council Men, the Minister, the Duke, The Duchess, the clergy, the Bishop, the deacons, the dons, the industrial greats, the titans, the illustrious and positioned from across the proud metropole.

They thronged and pulsed in magnificently expensive guises, milling round each other like automatons sipping flutes of even more expensive champagne. The rarefied air was filled with the bellicose laughter of the satiated and the titled.

It was outside this caviared scrum that Lefwinus and Odelgarde landed. 

"Ah! Smell that lad! Tis the noisome stench of fattened fuckwits. No matter when it is, they're all the same swine!"

The Head Usher came out to greet the pair. He eyed their shifty looks with suspicion and his nose rankled at the foul aroma coming off their ancient clothes.

"Could I please see your invitations!" he commanded snootily.

"Hear that Odelgarde! This swill-monkey wants our invitations!" laughed Lefwinus.

The page-boy howled and leapt onto the usher growling like a mad dog. In one fell swoop he'd sliced off his head with a huge cutlass.

The bloodied boy turned and looked at his Master with the man's severed head under his arm, the boar in the other.

"Two invites!" 

They both roared with laughter and booted open the crystal double-doors of the Bishop's palace.

Odelgarde threw the two heads high in the air and Lefwinus quartered them with his halberd with inhuman speed spattering thick blood over the assembled elite.

Masked men and women screamed as the two aliens from the Dark Age skewered and chopped their way through the crowd sending limbs and entrails flailing through the air.

A particularly rotund chicken planted himself in front of the murderous pair.

"What the hell do you think you're doing you stinking scoundrels? I'm the Palace Sheriff and this is my watch!" he yelled.

"Sheriff Chicken eh! I am Lefwinus, Lord of Misrule, at thy personal servitude. Odelgarde, my good man, please if you will, give the Chicken our warmest introductions!"

"Yes Lord!" smiled the page, whereupon he gathered a heap of sleeved arms and pantalooned legs and set it alight. The Sheriff turned to stare at it in abject horror.

Lefwinus spun his halberd and with a flourish rammed the sharp end forcefully up the Sheriff's backside and continued to push.

"That's quite the entrance Master Chicken!" howled the Misruler.

Finally through, the Sheriff was lowered, impaled on the halberd, crossways onto two tall severed legs stood upright at the sides of the crackling bonfire of limbs.

Odelgarde rotated the halberd and the official screamed in agony as his poultry costume burned away and the taut skin on his belly began to crisp and peel away revealing wetter things beneath dropping into the flames.

"One good turn deserves another!" quipped the page and they both cried with laughter.

Taking out his cat-o-nine-tails the Lord of Misrule leapt onto the chandelier above and peering round the gored company he proclaimed:

"Where is this Time's Bishop, that mitred guzzling twat! Where is he?"

"I am here Lefwinus you dribbling ass!" came the belligerent reply.

The Lord of Misrule and his page both gawped to see the source of the impudence and found it.

Sat upon the palatial throne was a huge figure resplendent in cream raiment and topped with the sacred Mitre of the episcopal seat. Her face was young and angelic, her hair long and falling in curled tresses over her massively broad shoulders. She smiled.

"Who the fuck are't thou?" asked the Misruler as he and his ward strode toward the dais.

"Why I'm surprised thou dost not know me Lord Drooler! I'm the mitred guzzled twat who vanquished you to the gutter from whence you crawled the last time we crossed!"

Lefwinus squinted to focus on the speaker. He shuddered.

"Gregoria! Tis you, our old enemy, the papal piss-flap!"

"Tis I Misrule, Yes, Gregoria, the Pope of Fools and I trump your scratty arse when'ere we meet. Alas, I fear, you cretinous wanker, this time too!"

"I know not how you comest here you shit-stain Pope but I care not. Odelgarde and I shall mount your crooked seat and lance your foolish arse till the angels die of boredom!"

At this the two boys began to sprint, shrieking loudly with cutlass and cat-o-nine-tails wind-milling lethally through the air.

"Let us draw and quarter this fat partridge in a piss pot!" yelled Lefwinus as he leapt high into the air, Odelgarde following at his heels.

Gregoria stood slowly, her gargantuan frame casting a shadow on the reredos. Her massively overgrown hand reached down and clasped a mammoth gold crozier lying next to the throne. She wielded it with immense power into an angled position in front of her as the chintz of her vestments released a blinding light.

She heard Lefwinus and Odelgarde descend through the haze and stood like a rock as they realised too late that they would be pierced by the Fool's golden pike.

The two boys screamed in agony as they slid down the crozier all the way to the Fool Pope's fists, where they stared near death into the girl's huge eyes.

"Till next we meet Grego-r-i-a..." whispered the Lord of the Misrule as he and his page bled out.

"I fear not Leftwinus, you are the last, as am I" smiled the Pope of Fools.

The three denizens of a darker age all began to fade and crumble to powder, the dust rising in the warm air to the high rotunda, where they coalesced into a single smudge on the fresco of raging angels.

On the dais a lonely crooked figure emerged from behind the throne, in his hands his two ancient figurines, both with blood-filled wells. The old professor placed them on the floor and stamped on them forcefully crushing them to a fine bone ash.

He staggered backwards and sat exhausted on the throne, both his thumbs deeply cut, a reluctant king of the Christmas gore and carnage his dark heart had made.

GHOSTS

They're everywhere ghosts. And they like to mess with us.

I think of them as cartoons of the dead, Animations from the grave. Adverts in the intermission. Interreference on the screen of life. They can be a pain.

I've seen them you know, Ghosts.

We'll one really.

I was fiddling with some mirrors in my bedroom, after the teacher challenged us, to see if I could capture infinity. I set up five of them all reflecting each other's pictures. A nest of realities. It was beautiful if I say so myself.

Whilst lost in the scattering I detected a thin fog forming.

And their it was.

A woman's spirit caught in the mirrors flitting about trying to get out.

It reminded me of the Ghostbusters' ghost-trap. But they're not real. This was.

The creepiest bit was when she stopped gyrating and stared straight at me.

That woman hated me, I could tell. She wanted my life.

Scared of her getting out I quickly turned the mirrors flat and put them back in the rooms I'd found them.

Seeing a ghost like this is unusual. A certain algorithm of light and circumstance needs to come together to allow it to happen and as I've said it's only happened to me once.

More often than not I feel them. They piggyback my hand as I'm typing, attempting to type as well, as they might have done in life. I half expect them to change what I'm writing but besides a few nudges of the keys they never have. 

Oddly enough it's almost a pleasant experience and lends a whole new meaning to the idea of ghost writing! I do feel sorry for them to be honest. Writing connects people from all walks and all ages across the years. They yearn for that connection. I can feel one now resting on my fingers,

They taste strange too. Yes, I've tasted ghosts! A few times. Being a form of charged mist they can easily enter your mouth. I've literally eaten phantoms! They like to be shovelled into my mouth with a spoon whilst I'm eating pudding. It sounds crazy I know! Maybe it's the memory of desserts that they find so sweet and wish more than anything to taste them again.

It's the light static that gives them away in your mouth. A sort of powdery buzz like when you put battery contacts on your tongue. There's a hint of iron as well, as if you've bit the inside of your cheek but only very slightly. I imagine they have a tinge of blood still lingering inside them after living a proper life. Like memory foam I guess.

It would be great if I could say I enjoy eating ghosts like I do candyfloss but I don't really. They can get over-excited inside your body and forget that they're dead. It all comes flooding back in a fashion once they fill your limbs and head like a hand in a glove. But without substance they can't do anything and get annoyed. 

I had one in me a while back. I think it was a girl. She was kicking inside me like a baby. I pitied her. She felt small. She must have died young. A mere tooth. She left through my eyes, which made them water slightly. Ghost tears of all things!

Anyway, I'm going to stop typing. The presence on my hands is desperate to write and making me sli 

           p.

Its best if I carry on later when its hopefully cleared of 

                                                                                       f!

OLD CHRISTMAS EVE

Twas but a flicker in the tallow flame burning in the window. I lit it so that he may find his way home. Thank the Lord God. It was nothing but the rude wind from the hill where the fir tree stands.

Its Christmas Eve tonight. Old Christmas himself saunters the hoary lanes with his dripping candles and evergreens. Stop by Old Man. Please.

I've left him some ale and some cheese from the dairy lest he forgets to bless us with his mistletoes and sage. A blessing for the Yule and the year to follow when we will need his magik luck to run well our stony soils and meagre crops. Yes, it would be truly good. But I'll leave no carrots for Old Man Christmas.

Let's pray its him and not .... the other one. The one who feigns civility and knocks lower down the wood with his furred paw mucked from leaping in the empty furlongs of our darknesses.

In disguise he comes, the evil one. A field animal at home in the worst of winter, its eyes accustomed to the black of night, its legs muscled from clearing our graves, insulting the dead with steaming piss dripping from its legs. 

Fleet of foot and fetid breath, that devil's long front-teeth seem chiselled for tubers but it only plays with them. Its diet is finer for it feasts on our weaknesses on this Eve of Christ and drinks the gilded liquor of our waning souls.

It is to be feared, the ancient goblin from the fields. The smiling leveret. The rabbit-jack no less.

I've lit the hearth and wait nervously for my missing man. The excited bairns are bedded by the hearth but my husband isn't here, detained no doubt from market work whence he sold our sows yesterday to wealthy folk, the twenty third. He's vowed to fetch something back for our sacred table this Christmas Day.

I hope he's safe this cold eve, perhaps curled in soft hay inside a forest hut or nestled in a byre where cattle-breath warms his face.

Dear Lord, do not let him meet the hopping one as it springs between the thorns and hips searching for the lame on this night of nights, its sagging belly hollow as the howling pit from which it sprang.

But lo, I hear something, some sound anew in the drape of dark. The hearth shudders as frost crackles beyond the door where two feet tread. Or God forbid, four filthy paws.

Knock, knock, knock!

High upon the door I hear the knocks and bound for the bar to let him through, my man, frozen to the bone, pale and staring like a lunatic.

He walks and grins. The bairns wake up.

It is only then I see the hare upon his back and He is in.

MAKE ME SOME LAMBSWOOL MY DEAR

She wandered into the Museum that day. It was freezing cold that New Year's Eve and raining outside in the dead of Winter.

Shaking herself dry she made her way to the pendulum at the centre of the atrium.

The huge weight hung from the high ceiling. She stared up into the distant roof and blinked as a lightening bolt flashed by. The thunder came next and seemed to shake the building. The pendulum shuddered.

Snuggling into her long coat she took the huge marble steps to the top floor. The levels were circular and the uppermost one held the medieval displays and the whispering wall.

Inside the tall glass cases were dishevelled artefacts from the middle ages found close by; pots, utensils, brooches and canon balls. There was also a large bowl with a gnarled wooden spoon alongside a recipe for something called Lambswool. Peering down she realised that the spoon wasn't just weathered. It had been bitten all over.

Next to the bowl and spoon was a little card, which read 'Kitchen ware found near the site of the old village doctor. The area was said to have been haunted by demons and that the spoon was used by the Devil'.

A map located the old Doctor's surgery.

By coincidence the site of the old surgery was where her own house stood now and it still retained the name. She shivered involuntarily.

"The Devil! Where I live!" she said to herself, "How horrible! What complete tosh!"

Sauntering further into the gallery she found herself staring at a portrait in oils. It was of a man, a man's face. He wore a black hood and held a huge black beaked mask under his arm. His eyes were red and his skin a pale yellow. He looked ill. His smiling mouth was slightly open and behind were stained gritted teeth. He seemed to glare at her with an unexpected but palpable malice and he emanated an utter loathing of her which touched her very core. This was the face of pure evil.

Staggering back from the picture she caught sight of the label.

"Village Doctor: Reputed to have Infected the whole Village with the Black Death and Invited the Devil to Supper to celebrate the Slaughter."

"The Doctor!" she gasped.

Running from the display she could still feel those hateful red eyes burning into her back as she took the corner to the start of the whispering gallery.

She stood taut against the wall and breathed heavily, her breaths coming in large gulps. Slowly she calmed herself and looked around to see of anyone was there. Slightly embarrassed she laughed nervously and took a few paces along the circular wall. 

Making sure that no-one else was on this floor or along the wall she faced into it and whispered "Hello!"

Chuckling and brushing her overcoat she walked a couple of steps and suddenly stopped.

"Hello!" replied a voice slithering almost silently along the wall.

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she looked around frantically to see who could have replied to her on the upper floor. She had checked and was certain she was alone a few moments ago.

There was no-one.

"Hello! Are you there my dear?"

The woman exhaled in fright and ran around the circular level looking for the exit.

The stranger's voice continued.

"We shall have company tonight. Make us some Lambswool my dear and I will be pleased! You do want to please me and my guest don't you!"

The woman listened with increasing horror. Who on earth could be whispering to her along the wall? And that voice! A terrible, dreadful voice, so utterly inhuman and full of .....

"Malice!" she exclaimed and all at once knew she was listening to the whispers of the Village Doctor, whose portrait hung in the gallery next door.

Her whole body shook and she searched and searched for the exit but to no avail. The whispering wall seemed to be endless and she ran and ran in continuous circles until she could run no more.

Bent double she struggled for air and sobbed.

The Doctor resumed.

"Use the large bowl and spoon for mixing the Lambswool my dearest and let my guest taste it first lest he should get angry and turn on ... you!"

The woman screamed in terror. This can't be happening. She must be hearing things. Someone downstairs must be talking on the phone and somehow its echoing through the marble to here.

"Yes that's it!" the woman consoled herself.

"I shall be home at the strike of 7, when my work is done my sweet. But heed me, have it ready!" he warned and with that the Doctor's voice receded back into the walls and became silent.

Holding her head, shrieking loudly, the woman found the exit and hurried down the massive stairs until she was outside in the bitter cold once more. The Museum attendant was just shutting the large iron gates for early closing. It was 4 'o' Clock.

"Happy New Year for tomorrow my dear!" he said to her, his breath rising like a ghost.

She froze and stared at the attendant but he was smiling and his friendly face put her once more at ease.

"Yes, Happy New Year!" she replied tucking her ands in her pockets.

She was pleased to feel the tinge of winter on her face again and she shrugged off the past half an hour as nothing more than an unpleasant daydream brought on by the macabre museum.

Regaining her composure she stopped at a micro-pub, the Fleece and sat happily drinking a glass or two of the local bottled beer and after an hour she bought two more bottles to take home, which she thought later, was quite an unusual thing for her to do.

Feeling the warmth of the beer reddening her cheeks she strolled home. She passed the Butchers, where the jolly man waved. She passed the hairdressers, where the ladies waved to her as well. At the village Church she paused to look at the graveyard over the wall. The headstones were lob-sided and stained like old teeth. Many of them were plague victims, re-interred from the fields a century or so ago.

"The plague!" she whispered to herself.

"Did you say something my dear?"

The woman spun round as if her own grave had been walked on and looked straight into the face of the local Priest.

"Wishing you a very happy and healthy new year to come my child" warmed the Priest and took her hands in his.

As he touched her, his smile didn't last and he quickly withdrew his hands and hurried away back to his Church.

"Happy New Year!" she called after him somewhat puzzled and a little frightened by his odd behaviour.

She jumped as the Church clock struck the hour. It was 6 'o' Clock.

Reaching her door the woman had the strangest feeling that someone was behind her. Pivoting round she saw no-one but the feeling persisted as she unlocked the large wooden door, a leftover from the previous house-owner. The house name-plate glistened as the fist New Year's Eve firework lit up the darkness. It read 'The Old Surgery'.

Taking off her long coat she immediately struck a match and ignited the kindling and paper and coal she had prepared in the large kitchen hearth earlier that day. The woman made herself a cup of hot cocoa on the stove and turning with it in her hands she froze.

Standing on the big timber table was a large bowl, a wooden spoon and a parchment curling at the edges.

Shivering uncontrollably she knew instinctively that these were the vary same objects she had peered at several earlier in the Medieval gallery.

She moved closer and saw that the parchment was indeed a recipe for lambswool and nearly fainted.

Clutching the edge of the table she steadies herself and felt an undeniable urge to read the recipe.

Take warme beer, boile creme with thrice cloves, droppe three yolks in withe sippets of bread, put all in a bowl and pour in the warm ale to crowne the bowl full. Scattere sugar, stick with white almonds and spice with cinnamon, ginger, and sugar. This thee shall do to make the Lambswool and howle with your guests.

The urge in her grew stronger and she took the bowl and the spoon and followed the recipe to the letter utilising the beer she bought from the Fleece. Everything else was in her pantry, the ginger, the nutmeg and eggs.

She busied herself completely, overtaken with a compulsion to make the best Lambswool in the village for her husband and his esteemed guest. 

Finished, the thick cream slopped over the sides of the Howling Bowl. The woman dipped her finger in and wrapped her eager tongue around the sweet brew.

"Mmmmm!" she cooed.

Her clock suddenly struck seven. The shock of the chimes brought the woman to her senses.

She stared incredulously at the large bowl of liquid and the wooden spoon in her hand.

"What ...."

She didn't have time to finish her question because the front door of the house burst open. The cold winter air rushed through and into the gloom of the hallway stepped two figures.

The one at the front was wearing a long black coat with a black hood and a huge beaked mask.

"Hello my dear! Happy New Year! Did you make me some lambswool for my guest?"

The guest barged past the Doctor and on two steaming cloven feet lurched towards the woman in the kitchen, violently grabbing the wooden spoon from her and voraciously ladled from the bowl.

"Mmm! Lambswool!" he gurgled smiling through pointed teeth, which he began to bite the spoon with. He took her hand and bit her sticky finger hard.

"You started without me!"

As the Doctor laughed the woman began to scream.