The Nuckelavee

Christopher Golden & Mike Mignola

The old man had a shuddery way about him, a fidgety, near-to-tears aspect to every glance and gesture that said he'd jump at every shadow, if only he had the strength. If only he weren't so damned old. But his eyes weren't old. His eyes were wild with terror.

It was a cold, clear evening in the north of Scotland, and the sky was striped with colors, from a bruised blue on one horizon to the pink of sorrow or humiliation on the other. The rolling hills that surrounded the crumbling stone estate had no name save for that of the family which had resided there for more than five hundred years: MacCrimmon.

"That's it, then. Just as I said. It's dry as kindling, now, and ne'er will run again," said the old man, whose name was Andrew MacCrimmon.

He was the last of them.

MacCrimmon's wild eyes darted about like those of a skittish horse, as though he waited for some shade to steal upon him. Night had not quite fallen, and already, it seemed the man might die of fright, heart stilled in his chest so as not to be heard by whatever he feared might be hunting him.

Whatever it was, it had to be horrible, for the old man stood on the slope of the hill beside a creature whose countenance would give a hardened killer a week of restless nights and ugly dreams. Hellboy carried himself like a man, but his hooves and tail, his sawed-off horn-stumps, and his sheer size spoke another truth.

There were those who thought him a devil. But Andrew MacCrimmon would have sought help of the devil himself if he thought it would have done him any good.

"You'll stay, then, won't you?" the old man asked. "You must."

Hellboy grunted. He stared at the dry river bed, gazing along its path in both directions. It didn't make any sense at all to him, but he hadn't been there more than fifteen minutes. Just a short way up the bank of the dry river was a small stone building. When the water had still run through there, it would have stood half in, half out of the river.

"What's that?" Hellboy started off toward the stone structure.

"Ye don't understand," the old man whimpered. "Ye've got to help me. I was given to understand that ye do that sort of thing."

As he approached the small building, Hellboy narrowed his eyes. The thing was ancient. Older, even, than the MacCrimmon place, which stood on the hill behind them. The place couldn't be called a castle. Too small for that. But it was too big to be just a house, and too dilapidated to be called a mansion.

But this other thing ...

"What is this?" he asked again.

"It's as old as the family," the old man told him. "Been there from the start. My grandfather told me he thought it was the reason the MacCrimmons settled here."

Hellboy studied the structure. The ancient stone was plain, but overgrown with ivy save for where the water would have washed across it before the river had gone dry. Centuries of water erosion had smoothed the stone, but Hellboy could still make out the faintest impression of carving. Once upon a time, there had been something drawn or written on that stone surface, but it was gone now.

Curiously, he clumped down into the dry river bed and around the other side of the edifice. His hooves sank in the still damp soil. There was something else on the river side of the building. Set into the stone, there was what appeared to be a door.

"How do you get in there?" he asked.

The old man whimpered.

There were no handles of any kind, nor any edges upon which he might get a significant grip. Still, Hellboy tried to open the door, to no avail.

"Please, sir, ye must listen to me," MacCrimmon begged.

Hellboy paused to regard him. The man's long hair and thick, bristly beard were white, and his face was deeply lined. He might have been a hermit, a squatter on this land, rather than its lord. Of course, 'lord' was a dubious title when it referred to the crumbling family home, and a clan which no longer existed.

"Go on."

"The river was here before us, but the legend around the doom of Clan MacCrimmon was born right here on this hill. When the river goes dry, the legend says, it'll mean the end of Clan MacCrimmon. I've no children, ye see. I'm the last of the clan. Now that the river is dry, death will be coming for me.

"I knew it right off," the old man said, becoming more and more agitated. "Took three days for the river to run dry. Three days, you understand?"

Hellboy grunted. "Not really."

It was then that he noticed that the river wasn't completely dry. A tiny trickle of water ran past the door, past the building. It wasn't more than three inches wide, and barely deep enough to dampen the earth, but it was there. Hellboy reached down to put his finger into the water, and MacCrimmon cried out as if in pain.

"No, you mustn't! It's the doom of the MacCrimmons, don't you see? When the water stops running, the doom of my clan will be released."

"That's ... interesting." With a shrug, Hellboy stepped up onto the slope again. "So what do you expect me to do?" he asked, massively confused by the old man's babbling. "Some legend says you're gonna die, I don't know how I'm supposed to deal with that."

The old man clutched at Hellboy's arm with both hands, eyes flicking back and forth in that disturbing, desperate twitch.

"You'll stay for dinner," he said, but it wasn't really a question. "You'll stay, and you'll see."

It was a very long drive back to anywhere Hellboy might stay that he wouldn't be shot at by local farmers or constabulary, so when Andrew MacCrimmon urged him on, he trekked up the hill to the crumbling manse alongside the old man. It was a gloomy place, a testament to entropy, with barely a whisper of the grandeur it must once have had.

Once they had entered, Hellboy saw that he had not been entirely correct about its origins based on his initial observations. While the manse itself was no more than three hundred years old, it was built around an older structure, a cruder, more fundamental tower or battlement, that must once have served as home and fortress for whomever had built it.

MacCrimmon Keep, someone at the BPRD had called it. Hellboy hadn't understood before, but now he saw it. This was the keep, and the rest of the place had been built up around it.

When they had settled inside, the old man brought out cold pork roast and slightly stale bread. There was haggis as well, but it looked like it might have gone over somewhat. Not that Hellboy was the world's greatest expert on haggis, but there was a greenish tint to it that made him even less likely to eat it than if he'd been trapped for a week on Everest with nothing to gnaw on but coffee grounds and it was a choice between haggis or his fellow climbers — which was pretty much the only way he would've eaten haggis even if it were fresh.

"Sorry I don't have more to offer," MacCrimmon muttered, a mouthful of questionable haggis visible between what was left of his teeth as he spoke. "The cook and t'other servants left three days ago, when the river started to slow. They know, y'see. They know."

When the meal was done, MacCrimmon seemed twitchier than ever. The manse was filled with sounds, as every old building is — a sign of age like the rings in a tree stump. The old man must have been familiar with most of those sounds, but now they frightened him, each and every one. He seemed to draw into himself, collapsing down upon his own body, becoming smaller. Decaying already, perhaps, at the thought of death's imminent arrival. Or imagined arrival.

"Cigar?" he asked suddenly, as if it were an accusation.

Hellboy flinched, startled. "Sure."

MacCrimmon led him to the library, which was larger than the enormous dining room they'd just left. Two walls were lined floor to ceiling with old, desiccated books, but Hellboy's eyes were drawn immediately to the other walls. To the paintings there, above and around the fireplace — where the old man now built a roaring blaze — and around the windows on the outer wall. Clan MacCrimmon came to life on those walls, in the deep hues and swirls of each portrait, but none of them was more vibrantly powerful than the one at the center of the outer wall. It hung between two enormous, drafty, rattling windows, and seemed, almost, a window itself. A window onto another time, and another shade of humanity. For the figure in the portrait was a warrior, that much was clear.

"Clan MacCrimmon?" Hellboy asked, glancing at the other portraits on the wall.

The old man seemed reluctant even to look at the portraits, but he nodded his assent as he handed Hellboy a cigar. With wooden matches, they lit the sweet-smelling things and began to smoke. After a short while in which nothing was spoken between them, the old man looked up at the portrait of the warrior that hung between the windows.

"That'd be William MacCrimmon. A warrior, he was, and fierce enough to survive that calling. Old William lost his closest friend in battle in 1453, and promised to care for the other warrior's daughter, Margaret."

Hellboy took a long puff on the cigar, then let the smoke out in a huff as he studied the old man. MacCrimmon was warming to the story of his ancestor, clinging to it as though it were a life preserver. It might only have been a way to pass the time, but Hellboy wondered if, in some way, it was the old man's way to keep his fears at bay, just for a while.

"Though already quite old for his time, William fell in love with Margaret, and married her. It was a sensible thing, perhaps the best way to care for the girl. Trouble was, Margaret was a Christian. William had to make some changes. He wasn't from the mainland, ye see. But from the isle of Malleen. Margaret wouldn't hear of living on the island, for there were stories, even then, of the things which thrived on Malleen."

Hellboy raised an eyebrow and scratched the stubble on his chin. "Things?"

For the first time since he began the story, MacCrimmon looked at him. The old man grinned madly.

"Why, the fuathan, o' course. Ye've never heard of them?"

Hellboy didn't respond. Considering the job, he didn't study nearly as much as he should have. The old man didn't seem to notice, his attention drawn back to the portrait of his warrior ancestor.

"Old William had known the people, the fuathan, since he was a bairn, ye ken. Shaggy little beasts that might be men if not for the way nature twisted their bodies. The legends say they hated men, but not so, not so. They were the servants and allies of the islanders, and held malice only for those from the mainland.

"Still, when William married Margaret, and chose to remain here in the north country, rather than return to the island, the fuathan had no choice. They came along. It were they who built the original keep, and that pile out in the river bed. It were they who made the river run, so the legend goes, for the fuathan were ever in control of the water.

"What it was built to house, the legends dinna say, but the story has it that they raised it in a day, and the keep itself in a week, all the while, making certain Margaret MacCrimmon would never see them. There's a circle of stones in the wood over the hill that were used for worship. The fuathan lived there, in the wood around the circle, and the clan grew with both the new religion and the old faith."

Hellboy shivered. He'd heard similar stories dozens of times, about the encroachment of Christianity into pagan territories, one family at a time. But in this case, with the results crumbling and gloomy around him, it seemed far more tangible. Honestly, it gave him the creeps. The clash of old and new faiths could not have been a healthy one. He had to wonder what it had done to the offspring of that union, down across the centuries.

The old man seemed to have run out of steam, though he still stared at the portrait of the warrior. And there was something odd about that portrait, something that held the eye. Hellboy tore his gaze away, took a puff of his cigar, and turned his attention on the old man again.

"So you live here alone, now? I mean, except for the servants who ran off?"

"Last of the clan," MacCrimmon agreed, apparently forgetting that he'd told Hellboy that already. "Alone here since my brother died."

With the fat cigar clenched in his teeth, the old man moved to the stone fireplace, the blazing light flickering over his features. There were faded photographs in silver frames on the mantel, and MacCrimmon pulled one of them down and handed it to Hellboy. In the corner, a dusty grandfather clock ticked the seconds by, its pendulum glinting with the light of the fire as it swung back and forth.

In the photograph, two young men flanked a beautiful girl, whose raven hair and fine-china features reminded Hellboy of a woman he had once known. He pushed the thought away. The two men were obviously MacCrimmon and his brother. Though Andrew had grown old now, though his face was wrinkled and bearded, the eyes staring out of that photograph were the same.

Wild, even then. And Hellboy had to wonder if the man had ever been sane.

He handed the photograph back to the old man. "Who's the girl?"

MacCrimmon set his cigar on the stone mantel, and stared at the photo, a dreamy look relaxing his features for the first time since Hellboy had arrived.

"That'd be Sarah Kirkwall. She was here all that long summer. This photo was taken the day before me brother Robert announced that they were to be engaged." The old man frowned, and rubbed distractedly at his forehead. When he spoke again, his voice was lost and far away. "They lived here, with me, until Robert ... died. I told Sarah she could stay, that I'd care for her, just as Old William MacCrimmon had taken care of Margaret five hundred years ago. That she could ... marry me."

The anguish in the old man's voice was horrible to hear, and Hellboy felt the sadness in that old stone dwelling creeping into his bones.

"So you married?"

The old man shook his head, still stating at the photo. "It were Robert she loved. When he died, she ... went away. I never did marry. Sarah was the girl for me. There never were anyone else."

MacCrimmon looked even older now, shrunken, staring down at the photograph as though trapped, now, in that other time, back when. Hellboy thought again of the portrait of the warrior on the wall, how it looked almost like a window on another time, and seemed to draw you in. The photograph in the silver frame had the same effect on the old man.

Hellboy scratched the back of his neck, where what hair he had was tied back in a knot. "How did Robert die?" he asked.

The frame tumbled from the old man's hands and shattered on the stone in front of the fireplace. Hellboy prepared to catch MacCrimmon, thinking he must be about to collapse, but the old man just stared at his hands, the spot where the frame had been. Slowly, he reached out and took his cigar from the mantel, and pulled a long puff on it.

"Ten years ago, this very night," MacCrimmon said.

He seemed almost calm, and then a shudder ran through him and he turned and looked at the grandfather clock. When he spoke again, his voice cracked with a panic he could no longer hide.

"Ten years ago tonight," he repeated. "He died at three minutes past nine."

Hellboy glanced at the clock. It was only a few minutes before nine then, half a dozen minutes to go before the dreadful anniversary.

With that edge of panic still in his voice, the old man continued. "He was three days sick, dying, before he went at last. Just as the river was three days, drying up. Now it's almost time. The last trickle will run through the dry bed out there, and he'll come for me."

Minutes ticked by, and Hellboy just watched the old man in silence. The cigar burned in MacCrimmon's hand, but he made no effort to smoke it. Then, suddenly, the old man glanced at the burning weed in his hand, and he narrowed his gaze, as if seeing it for the first time. With a tremor of disgust, he threw the cigar into the fire, which by now had begun to burn low. The flames flared up inexplicably, tendrils of fire lashing out at the stone masonry, then dying down again.

The grandfather clock chimed nine.

Andrew MacCrimmon dropped to his knees before Hellboy, tears beginning to slip down his craggy features.

"Save me!" he pleaded.

Hellboy only looked at him dubiously.

The clock continued to chime.

As if he'd been startled by some sudden noise, the old man turned his head and glanced about, eyes more wild than ever, hands on his head as though he might hide himself away.

"Did ye not hear that? It's the doom of the MacCrimmons!"

"It's just the clock," Hellboy told him.

The old man rushed to one of the wind-rattled windows and threw it open. He leaned out, but Hellboy knew that from that angle, there was no way MacCrimmon could see what he was looking for — the river bed, of course, and that little stone building the man had insisted was built by horrid little fairy creatures.

"Not the clock! Don't you see? It's him. It's it. The stream's gone dry, and it's coming out. Battering down that door. It's coming up the lawn now, coming for me!"

The old man turned from the window and fell again at Hellboy's feet.

He clutched the bottom of Hellboy's duster and buried his face in it, whimpering, muttering.

Hellboy frowned. "Did you bury your brother in that little building out there?"

"You saw that place," the old man stammered. "There's no way to open it from the outside, but ... from the inside ... no. Robert's cremated and his ashes are in a niche at St. Brendan's, where they ought to be. But ... "

MacCrimmon gripped his jacket even more tightly, his voice barely a whisper. "There, you must hear it. It's coming for me. His ghost has set it free. There! It's broken down the door. Can't you hear it on the stairs?"

Hellboy heard nothing. He looked down at the old man and felt a little sorry for him, though he had a strong suspicion what had driven him so completely mad.

"You killed him."

The old man wailed. "Robert has loosed the doom of the MacCrimmons on me for murderin' him. I fed him poison and sat by those three days while it killed him. I did it for her, I did it for the girl, and it wasn't ever me that she wanted ... "

His voice trailed off after that. He fell quiet, listening. Then the old man jerked, suddenly, as if he'd been pinched.

"It's there now!" he screamed, voice raspy and hoarse. "In the hall, just outside the door. Please, help me. Take me with you. Kill me! Anything. Just don't let that thing take me!"

Despite the old man's mad cries, however, the room was silent save for his blubbering and the ticking of the clock. On the face of that antique timekeeper, the long hand had moved inexorably along so that it was now four or five minutes after nine o'clock. The anniversary of Robert MacCrimmon's death had come and gone.

"Don't have a heart attack or anything," Hellboy said. "Look, I'll show you."

He reached for the doorknob, shaking his head ruefully. But just as his fingers touched it, the door came crashing down at him, tearing off its hinges and slamming Hellboy to the floor.

"Jeez!" he shouted in surprise.

As he tried to get out from under the heavy door, a sudden and tremendous weight was put on it from above, pinning him there. Hellboy grunted in pain, struggled to move, and could not. There was a horrid stench, like nothing he had ever smelled before, death and rot and fecal matter, blood and sweat and urine, matted horse hair and putrefying fish, and something else, something worse than all of those disgusting odors combined.

Then, without warning, the weight was removed. Something stepped off the door and into the room. Hellboy summoned his strength and his anger, and tossed the shattered door off him. He glanced around, and then he saw it, one of the most horrifying monstrosities he had ever laid eyes on. It was like a huge, equine creature that might have been a horse if it had any skin. Instead, there was only naked, purple muscle, and white tendons, and swollen, black veins. Growing out of its back was a human torso, also stripped of skin, with a head that swung about wildly as if there were no bones in its neck. Its huge mouths, both human and horse, gaped open and that stink poured out, almost visible, like breath in winter.

Its long arms snaked out and grabbed hold of old man MacCrimmon, and hauled him up onto the back of its horse segment. Hellboy started to roar, started to lunge for it, but a hoof lashed out and cracked against his skull, and he went down hard on the floor of the library, not far from the blazing fire.

By the time he shook off the blow, the creature was gone, the old man's screams echoing through the house and down the hillside. Hellboy rose, ready to give chase, but the fire flared again, and he turned to see that it was blue now. Tendrils of blue flame shot out of the blaze and seemed to touch each of the portraits in turn, ending with that of William MacCrimmon, founder of the clan.

Blue fire seemed to seep into the portrait, becoming paint, becoming one with the history in that window on that past. It truly was a window now, and through it, Hellboy could see the old warrior moving, turning to glare into the library with a stern countenance, cold and cruel in judgment. Tendrils of blue flame jumped from portrait to portrait, and the painted images of the warrior's descendants were somehow erased from their own frames, to appear behind the original, the founder. That portrait seemed to grow, with all of them standing therein, arms crossed before them, glaring down like inquisitors.

Then the portrait burst into flame, and Hellboy heard an enormous crack. The keep, the part of the MacCrimmon homestead that had been built so long ago by the fuathan, began to fall, to collapse down into the remainder of the house. The shelves and books in the library were set aflame, but the flame was nearly snuffed out as the walls collapsed, tumbling toward Hellboy.

He ran for one of the huge windows, not daring to look at the burning, living painting, at the ghosts of the clan MacCrimmon, for fear he might be sucked into that collective past. Hellboy crashed out through the window and fell twenty feet to the hillside below. The walls were crumbling in on themselves, but several stones came falling after him, and he rushed to avoid being crushed or buried.

He could hear Andrew MacCrimmon screaming, down the hill, where the riverbed was now completely dry. Hooves pounding the grass, Hellboy gave chase. Where the river had run, he saw hoof prints from the beast in the soft, damp earth. As he passed the structure that stood on the river's edge, he saw that the stone door he had found impossible to open now hung wide. Seconds after he crossed the dry riverbed, he heard a kind of explosion, and turned to see that even that stone structure had been part of the chain reaction. It was nothing but rubble now.

The doom of the MacCrimmons had come, all right.

There came another scream. Hellboy glanced up the opposite hill and saw the beast disappearing over its crest, looking like nothing more than a large horse bearing two riders. But the way its raw, skinless form glistened wetly in the moonlight ... it was no horse.

When he reached the top of the hill, however, neither beast nor man were anywhere in sight. Hellboy crouched in the spot he had last seen them, and found a trail. It was relatively easy to track; the beast was so heavy that its hooves left prints in the hardest, driest ground.

Hellboy followed.

Hours passed, and he made his way across farms and estates, through groves and over hills, and finally he came to a town on the north coast, the tang of the ocean in the air, the sound of the tides carrying through the streets. It was after midnight, and most of the residents had long since retired for the evening. In the midst of the town, on a paved road, he lost the trail. Hopelessly, he looked around for someone who might have seen something. After a minute or two, he spotted a portly man slumped in a heavy, old chair on the porch of what appeared to be some kind of mercantile.

"Hey, wake up," Hellboy said, nudging the portly man with the weight of his stone hand.

The man snorted, blinked his eyes open, and let out a yell of surprise and fear. The odor of whiskey came off him in waves.

"Quiet," Hellboy snapped. "I'm just passing through."

"Thank the Lord for that," the man said in a frightened whisper.

"You see anything strange go through here?"

The man stared at him as if he were insane.

"Anything worse?" Hellboy elaborated.

"Depends on your definition of strange, I suppose," the man said. "Two men came through, not long ago. Two men riding the same horse. Only one of them wasn't riding. He was the horse. That's pretty strange."

"You see where it went?" Hellboy demanded.

"Down to the rocks," the man replied. "Down to the sea. And that old one screaming all the way. Weren't a surprise, though. I'd scream too, that horse, and the whole thing smelling like a fisherman's toilet."

His voice trailed off and he moaned a bit, and fell back to sleep, or into unconsciousness. The whiskey had claimed him again.

Hellboy scratched his chin and looked along the paved road to the rocks and the ocean beyond. He could heard the waves crashing, and he started to walk toward them. At the end of the road, he stopped where the rocks began. There was a cough off to his left, and he turned to see an old woman standing on the front stoop of her home in a robe that was insufficient for the chill ocean breeze.

"It was a Nuckelavee," she told him.

Hellboy looked at her oddly, but she didn't even turn her face to him. She just stared out at the ocean.

"When I was but a wee girl in the Hebrides, my father told me a story. He were coming home late one night, and a Nuckelavee come up out of the ocean and chased him. He only escaped by jumping over a little stream of fresh water. The monster roared and spit and with one long arm snatched off me father's hat, but he got away clean save for a pair of claw marks to show off to prove the truth of it."

Now she looked straight at Hellboy for the first time.

"He was luckier than that old man tonight. That's certain."

Hellboy nodded and looked out across the waves again. He could see a dark hump in the distance, out on the ocean.

"What's that?"

The old woman hesitated. At length, she spoke, her voice low and haunted. " 'Tis the Isle of Malleen. But don't ye think about goin' out there. It's not a place fit for man, nor e'en a thing such as yourself. There's only evil out there, dark and cruel. If that's where the Nuckelavee was headed, no wonder the old man were screaming so."

Hellboy considered her words, staring at the island in the distance.

"I guess maybe he deserved it," he said after a bit. "I'm starting to wonder if maybe all it did was take that old man home. And I think there'll be hell to pay when he gets there."

The wind shifted, then, and for a moment, it seemed as though he could hear a distant scream, high and shrill and inhuman. But then the waves crashed down again on the rocks, and it was gone.