Necrotyr Boness

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This is the story im writting for a competition
its based in my town in 1645

Necrotyr Bo’ ness

An ink black raven sounded its morbid call as the first four plague victims in the town of Bo’ ness. Finishing his prayer the reverend ordered the coffins to be lowered.
The vicar picked up lumps of soil.
“From ashes to ashes,”
Clump
“Dust to Dust,”
Clump
“The circle completed,”Clump
“We give to the earth as it gave to us,”
Clump

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The undertaker finished placing the final piece of dirt onto the grave of Mabel Macintyre as the moon rose to its full position.
Brushing swat from his brow he stood back and admired his mortistical artwork.
He staggered back and slipped his hand into his trouser back pocket.
Pulling out a silver container , he unscrewed the lid and swung his head back. The liquid flew down his throat and into its guttural new home. Reattaching the containers lid he let out a sigh of relief. Then packing his things he left.

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Reverend James Arnoldson repositioned his collar on his shirt in the dim light of the room. The candles burn was warm and colourful as they danced slowly down their wicks. The gentle patter of feat outside the church on the streets changed.
The vicar could make out muffled calls in the crowd.
“Make way, I need an audience with Father James”Sensing that it was he whom the voice sought he steeped out from his humble abode.
He was met by the dazzle of the sun as it radiated down onto the rural town of bones. The rooftops sparkled in the sun as they stood defiant against the elements.
“Wind may blow and rain may pound, but defiant still shall the Scots still stand!” The thought rang out in James’s mind as he gazed out at the unfurling beauty before him.
“Father, Father” cried a young man. His coat and hat covered in dirt, “I came as quick as I could.” He was gasping hard as if to testify his last statement. “Desecration has befallen our noble graveyard!”
“What do you mean?” enquired the vicar. He watched as the man’s hair bobbed beneath his cap.
“Someone or something has disturbed the graves,” The man gasped as he began to rectify himself. “The Macintyre graves have been opened.”
“Come you must show me this abomination!” Father James said as he stepped down the stairs.
They hurried down the church grounds and swung open the rusted iron gats. As the hinges swung in their archaic manner a foul stench emitted from the graveyard.
“Over there,” stuttered the young man. The reverend looked in the direction of the shaking finger to the unmarked graves.
They were more than disturbed, they were opened…

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In the darkening room of the church the three men sat. A shaft of light penetrated the musky density of the chapel hall.
“So you shut the gates after you noticed the graves?” Asked the first man in a rhetorical state. His heavy shoulders drooping as the new reached his ears. “I buried them fully ,Father, I did not disturb the dead.”
“It does appear to be that they were not desecrated from the outside yet that they were opened from the inside, by the hands of those that are no longer mortal” the Father let the statement hang in the air.
Both the men who had spoken stopped to consider what had been said. As the last of the bells rang out to say it was ten o’clock a new voice sounded in the chapel.
“Father, Father” Rang the voice. “Father we need your help!” It was a woman’s voice she sounded truly distressed as she entered the hall.
“What is it Josephine?” asked the father realising the person who had come through his door. He raised himself from his seat to tend to the distressed woman.
“It is Greg Patterson, Father, the butcher, he was serving a customer when he was bitten by a monster. It has been slain but Mr Paterson has fallen deadly ill!”
“Come, take me there.” James said “Wait a minute” He stopped and turned before running back into a nearby cupboard. He returned with a large weighted hammer and a crucifix.
Josephine gasped as the hammer came into view.
James glanced to the woman then the hammer, “How can a Shepard defend his herd against wolves without the proper tools, if Mr Paterson has been tainted by this creature, I will be ready”

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A mumbled crowd had gathered around the Paterson and son family butchers. Once a local point of interest and pride for its prime steaks and rich pork it was now a scene of horror. The crowd stood in front of the store on the cobbles and the mud, ghoulishly awaiting a glimpse of what had befallen the famed butcher.
“Make way, make way” boomed the father as he made his way through the disorientated crowd.
As the crowd parted James began to ask for answers.
“What has transpired here?”
“A foul creature has taken the lives of our beloved butcher!” said one man as he pointed to a blood soaked window.
“He has been tainted by madness unknown to man!” screamed another woman.
From inside the building came a chorus of horrific moans.
“He has been bitten two of the men we sent to rescue him.”
As if on cue the three creatures appeared at the window. One hit his head of the window as another bared his blood drenched teeth to the crowd. In the back ground another seemed to hover. The faces of all three men were deformed by blotches similar to those reported in the London plague. Despite the deformations of the men the father recognised them, fathers, brothers and sons, they were no longer part of the vibrant world into which they glared mournfully.
Stroking his brown hair, Father Arnoldson began to worry.
What if these were the things from the graveyard?
What if these were powered by a higher being?
But more worryingly.
What if there were more?
He turned to face the crowd.
“Return to your homes!” He ordered, “Arm yourselves and protect those that you hold dear, do not walk these streets tonight or any other night until these beasts are slain” He added slyly “and watch your backs.” With this final warning he turned to face the butchers.
Behind him the crowd slowly dispersed, they left a stench of worry and fear. Their parting words were of necromancy and witchcraft.
As the last of the people left the creatures in the shop dispersed to the darker reaches and the reverend decided on his course of action.

[vermilition]

He waited for another five minutes until he made a decision, hammer in hand he waited. The shambolic shadows of the creatures moved with no purpose. Unlike people they seemed to have no real motive.
The reverend had to act. These things were an affront to god and those to whom he had a duty. Slowly he moved towards the door. Its pale blue frame was inviting, only to reveal the horror inside
. As the door swung gently on hinge, the reverend slid inside the butchers shop. Closing the door he sealed himself in with the creatures.
One of them was a few feet away.
Taking a deep breath of the putrid air, James Arnoldson, reverend of the Borrowstouness church, lunged.

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Slamming the hammer into the back of the creature’s head, the pale, blood soaked thing crumpled under itself with a defiant screech.
Using his momentum to carry him forward, James strode forward to the second creature who was slowly turning to face the reverend. Swinging his crucifix in an arc he hit the beast in the chest before it could react. It hobbled back a few steps as its brother lurched forward.
Now they lunged at the reverend. He parried the attacks of the lethargic creatures until the one on the left lunged to far and caught itself off balance. Slamming his hammer down, James struck the spine of the thing as it moaned. It hit the floor with a smash as it slid in the blood before dying.
The third creature seemed to step back into the corner with a kind of primitive intelligence. Father Arnoldson got his breath back.
“Unholy daemon!” He roared as he ran at the beast cowered in the corner.

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As James wiped the last of the bloody goop from his hammer and crucifix he was disturbed by the call of a young child.
“Help me, help me,” it called “Daddy bit a lady and tried to bite me”
Hearing the innocents’ plea the reverend got to his feat.
As he did a young girl appeared at the top of a flight of stairs.
“Help m…” she pleaded only to be snatched and dragged back to unholy torments by the creatures.
“The innocent are no longer safe…” Murmured James as he crept up the flight of stairs from which the girl was snatched. Smoke seemed to drift to the nose of the reverend as he glanced up from his feet to see columns of smoke appear to his left and his right.
As he came to the top of the stairs James gawped in horror.
The once verdant streets of Bo’ness had all but been destroyed, fires raged as masonry fell to the hands of the automaton creatures. Men, women and even children were not safe.
Father Arnoldson had to act.

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The church was but three hundred yards or so to the east and could be a rallying point.
Setting off into a jog he turned and twisted through the dark streets. It saddened him to see his town like this but James continued on. This was Scotland’s’ Troy, there was no wooden horse only the plague. The Trojan legions were replaced by the humble tons folk of Bo’ness, they were just as noble and powerful. They only needed to be awakened to this fact.
As he spun round a corner, James was to deep in his own thought to notice the man just in front of him. James bounced of the man, “I’m sorry father I did not see it was you.”
“It is fine as long as you are confined to the mortal realms. These things that walk the streets are disturbing us all but we shall prevail.”
A moment of silence passed before the reverend began again.
“I am making a way to the church, will you aid me?”
“If you require my aid then I shall gladly help father, I have weapons but my noble house has fallen to the damned, my family slaughtered when I went to check out the ruckus at the Paterson butchers.”
“Come then we shall console later, but now let us prepare for the upcoming fight, have you a name?” James asked.
“Aye, I am Graeme Mialichton, now let us make haste!” said Graeme as they started again down the long path.

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As father James reached the hallowed ground of the church grounds he awed at its condition. It had not been sacked yet still looked over cast in the melancholy mood of the times. A few of the towns’ folk had managed to scramble to the church ground when the disaster kicked off. They now lay resting, yet they were wary of the situation. Bloodied and bruised they remained as testament to the Bo’nessian survivor spirit.
Father Arnoldson had acquired quite a crowd himself. Numbering thirty in all they had made it through the streets of Bo’ness to their sanctuary of the church.
“Come my friends, join us in the shelter of the church.” Father Arnoldson boomed for once in this day he would be happy and the sight of other humans lightened his mood.
“Thank you father, you will be known in history for your generosity.” Said one old lady numbed by the sensation of speaking to another person without the mention of the horrors at work in the town.
Father James paused at the remark, and then shut the large wooden doors on the world.
“We mush stay locked inside his hall if we are to survive, and we must help others in need” He paused to let the statement sink in before continuing. “You there” he pointed to a young man in the newly formed congregation “run up the stairs and ring the bell, it will serve as a beacon for those who need our help.”
“Aye sir” said the young man as he sprinted to the stairs and began his ascension.

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It was not but half an hour until the first strike of the bell until when the first of the victims came through the door bloodied and bruised, but they came standing as proud as they could in the times.

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Hours later the first of the creatures stood before the church. It was large, standing over seven feet tall. One of the refugees recognised it to be the Lumberjack of Kinnel who lost some of his memory when a tree fell upon his head.
Standing still he suddenly snapped his neck back and let loose a mighty roar to his kinsmen.
As the fires raged in the town and as the screams of innocents pierced the sky itself, they massed before the church.

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An hour later they were standing at 300 of their foul number. Farmers, teachers, blacksmiths, women and children. All standing in a moaning, pale, red stained sea.
And as the sun set they marched.

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“TO THE DOOR” balled the reverend. He was the first to the door and began to shut the door as the first of the creatures reached the steps. It moaned loudly as more people came to shut the ancient oak door.
Slam
Both of the doors were shut and bolted.
Thump thump thump went the hands upon the doors of the church. Desecrated hands railed against the doors.
“Women and children to the bell tower” ordered the reverend. As the pitter patter of feat wound its way up to the bell tower.
“Fellow members of the faithful” began the reverend “we must stand on this holy land and defend it to the last!”
A cheer resonated over the dull thuds of hands outside.
Suddenly the doors shook as they burst open to reveal the true host of darkness.
In the centre of the mass hordes were the leaders. The three remaining members of the McIntyre family. Covered in blood and soot, they burst the door open with the foul magic’s of their recreation.
The creatures advanced immediately in their shambolic way.
A few fell on the stairs as they made their murderous decent
“Stand firm!” rang the cry from a man in the back of the defenders. This was met by a chorus of war chants from the defenders.
“By god we shall be victorious! Have faith men of Bo’ness!” The reverend balled as he prepared to fight the horde.


James’s hammer forced a creature to explode in brain ichor as the first of the creatures reached his deadly grasp.
“Show no quarter for you shall receive none” he shouted as he felled another creature with a crippling blow across the face. It crippled and pooled with its monstrous brother as its McIntyre masters looked on.


The fevered fighting continued for what seemed an age until the first defender fell.
He went down leaving a small pile of monsters as his humble legacy. The mood shifted after that as slowly defender after defender fell to the hordes of death.
As they fell to the wrath of the beast they took down the armies of the McIntyre slowly. Each one giving his successors more of a chance of survival than he in turn was given.
At a lull in the fighting Graeme approached the reverend, “We must kill the leaders they have to be the source of power. We have only twenty survivors all off whom are exhausted by their valiant efforts.”
“I agree we must lead the charge ourselves, come rally the men” replied the reverend.
“MEN OF BONESS WE HAVE SUFFERED TO LONG, FIGHT WITH ME” yelled the reverend as he ran to the hordes hell bent on destruction.

[vermilition]

James crashed to the front lines as a thunderbolt does to the ground. Hacking the foul beasts away to the core of their evil. Each hit cleansing the souls of the possessed.
The shouts of his fellow men behind him he spotted one of the McIntyre leaders, the child, a girl, her teeth gleaming behind the layer of drying blood. Bursting into a sprint he made for her. He ran and jumped planting the crucifix in her head as he cleared her horrific body.
She screamed and all the automaton beasts stopped and turned as James landed and spun planting a hammer blow on her lower cheek. Her head spun three hundred and sixty degrees as she fell to the ground, black light pouring from her mouth and eyes the magic leaving her body.
The first of the leaders defeated the Necrotyr seemed to slow down in their movements but they still managed to claim the lives of a few valiant Bo’nessians.