The Mask
by Carl Hughes
Reflected firelight flickered in demon tongues against the
chamber walls and bolted up the damp stones in the way
of startled lizards seeking shelter. Below, a naked man lay
face-down and spreadeagled, chained to a granite slab. For
him there would be no shelter, no escape. His back and
buttocks reflected the firelight too, but the sweat that
greased them owed nothing to heat.
Thunder had been rumbling for hours, at first only
as a remote background mutter scarcely audible above the
Atlantic waves that pounded this rocky corner of Scotland.
Now it boomed mightily, and rolled across the moor with
squalls of ice-tipped rain that slanted in sheets glimpsed
through each eruption of lightning.
Three other people also occupied the chamber,
one of them hooded in a coarse tawny habit bound at the
waist with cord. This figure stooped by the fireplace in
which logs blazed with peculiar intensity. Occasionally the
figure would withdraw a poker, inspect its glowing tip in
silence, and replace it in the flames. The two others, both
kilted and with manes of Celtic-red hair and beards, stood
waiting on either side of the granite slab and therefore of
the naked man.
‘You may harm me if you will,’ the prisoner yelled
above the din of thunder and wind.
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