The Byssus Killer by Charles Tucker (read a book .TXT) 📗

starlit sky glowed eerily green, a faint tint of the northern lights. A final blast of, “Nyodr,” saw a tremendous column of cream spray rise into the eerie green. It hung, immobile. Coming into focus within the spray appeared a huge Viking face, magnificently old, lined, bearded, godlike. The face broke into a wonderful smile directed upon the crashing seas. The seas fell back, calmed, quiet and obedient.

A whisper came from the old codger, “I had an old Norwegian skipper of four masters round the Horn who invoked the help of Njodr when the seas were so rough, we thought our time had come. Njodr was the god of sea and fire, calming both. Our skip believed Njodr could talk to men and grant them land and wealth. Stone Man has that gift of the gods.”

Jones, Mason and James were held in suspense. Listening to the old codger made them believe something extraordinary would happen on the midnight high tide.

Stone Man was clearly in commune with Njodr, oblivious to the physical world.

Just before midnight, the Viking visage of Njodr retreated high into the sky. Like the reflections of Ushant Light and Bishop Rock in days gone by, Njodr was visible to all folk in the Lost Land of Lyonnesse and the Lost Land of Lyonnais.

The old codger pointed out Njodr’s image hjgh in the night sky, but realised the scientists were not descended from Lyonnesse ancestors. They could not see the image. He joined hands with them and asked them to shut their eyes. For an old sea salt, his hands were as soft as warm silk. The men of science felt they were no longer on a cold ocean, but in the warmth of summer air. They opened their eyes. Njodr’s image was so close they felt they could reach out and touch it. They had joined the men of Lyonnesse in a collective consciousness they did not know they had.

The faint green background of distant northern lights changed colour to the transparent sheen of pure gold byssus cloth. Jones leapt to his feet. Senora Vigo was smiling down at him, a halo from a golden shell giving her a saintly look. On his visit to Sant Antioco, Jones had christened Senora Vigo ‘St Bisso’. Was she really ‘St Bisso’?

Two new images became clearer and larger. The first drew cries of astonishment.

Stone Man was smiling down at them! Stone Man! Nobody noticed he had gone. The old codger knew. When he joined hands and eyes were closed, Stone Man’s image formed in the midst of the hand-held circle and he lifted off into the night sky. Stone Man had gone home.

The second image formed, a beautiful young girl, fair of hair and sapphire blue of eye. Her golden framed image was so close to Stone Man, the entranced spectators thought they were brother and sister.

The beauty of these two young people stopped time. The Earth stood still. Who were they? Stone Man had no name, less so the young girl.

The old codger held out his hands and Jones, Mason and James eagerly joined him. “Before I say their names, my ancestors will search my soul to prove that I am their worthy messenger. I will call upon Iðunn, the goddess of eternal youth to allow me to share the history of our Norse gods with you.”

He cast his head back and roared Iðunn three times to the skies. Another Nordic beauty appeared together with Stone Man and his ‘sister’.

There was a long silence, made magical in the golden glow of the images in the sky, The old codger’s lined face grew softer, his voice younger. Iðunn smiled at him. The gods had agreed.

The old codger turned to Jones, Mason and James. He swept an arm in the heavenly direction of Stone Man and his sister,

“May I introduce you to Ask, you know him as Stone Man, and the girl is Embla. The gods sent them to repopulate the Earth after the last human extinction. You are descended from them.

“You know them as Adam and Eve!”

 

 

 The Mysterious

Dawn brightened the sky. The golden images faded. The seas remained mirror flat as Njordr had commanded. The human silence drawn from the golden wonder of the images in the heavens was so deep it softened out the throb of the diesel engine carrying them home. The old codger joined the skipper on the bridge, his piloting skills no longer needed. In the dim cabin lights his features grew ever younger. Jones joined them on the bridge, rolling his delicately marked cowrie shell between his fingers.

“You picked up that cowrie shell on Sennen beach when you first saw Ask, the Stone Man, after he had been dragged from the surf like a petrified log. Paramedics declared him dead. You believed him dead too, until his bright blue staring eyes locked on to yours. He frightened the wits out of you. The cowrie shell became too hot for your fingers to hold, but his eyes stared you into holding on to it. You held on. Ask was telling you the shells owned a destructive power that would kill our human race. You knew from that moment. He was alive. You had to save him.”

Jones nodded. He had to save a man, eyes pleading from a petrified coffin.

“When I picked up the cowrie, I wondered how a lifeless shell could grow larger each year, replicate its shape and its delicate markings, yet be so dead you could drill holes in it. In the manner of a virus, the shell was living off its fleshy host, a symbiotic protector. What if it mutated? Grew ever larger, immortal, unstoppable?

“I had a terrible thought. What if it mutated on the inside of any shell, a secondary shell, breaking free and needing a host to survive? It would clamp on to any living thing. Worse, what