Soon the cacophony started to take on a life of its own. It was racing around and around the villagers; pure sonic energy, wrapping them within it, like a tornado of sound.
The light began to fade with a quite unnatural rapidity, until the only illumination remaining was that from the braziers on which the folk roast was to be cooked. The burning embers cast long, malevolent black shadows across everything and the meagre light was tinged a hellish, sinister, claustrophobic red.
The scent from the roses grew ever more cloying, stifling, suffocating. The plants became thick bushes. The bushes became tangled thorn-trees, surrounding the churchyard, cutting off all escape.
Still the beat went on.
Devizes and Nutter were grinning widely. Hariman appeared to have grown in size and stature. Dave had dropped to his knees in adoration of him.
The villagers had begun looking around at one another in terror; searching for some kind of explanation; some kind of reassurance. Any kind of reassurance.
What was going on? Was this some kind of sick joke that only Hariman and his partners understood? Was it a cabaret conjuring trick, maybe? A theatrical performance?
But there was no such comfort to be had.
As the seconds ticked by, and the whirling and howling noise continued, so the concern and fear grew.
Now the noise had a voice. It was chanting, in and out of time to the thrumming and drumming and discordant brass.
Dave, Devizes and Nutter, recognized and joined in with the evil unholy chant.
“Siras! Etar! Besanar!” they shrieked.
Faster and faster whirled the noise.
Louder and louder was the chant.
“Siras! Etar! Besanar!”
Throughout the mayhem, Hariman continued his speech as if nothing at all untoward were occurring. He cared not if any of the villagers were listening. This was HIS day. He was talking at them, not to them. He had hit his verbal stride and was in full-on megalomaniac mode:
“Do you, any of you, actually think that I enjoyed being trapped in this small, sickly, shrivelled pink cocoon? This wretched mortal body?”
The chorus of noises had sharply risen again, matching Hariman’s hatred word for word, decibel for decibel.
“Do any of you seriously believe that I was even vaguely interested in you when you came into my surgery with your puny, pathetic complaints; your aches and pains and self-inflicted diseases? Really? Do you? Do you think that I – Me! – could be even remotely bothered with such minuscule matters as your life or death! You worthless maggots!”
Hariman had grown and grown during his tirade. He glared openly at the crowd now, defying any one of them to challenge him.
The sky was as black as a raven’s wing; the drumming, thrumming hooves, trumpets and chanting were at deafening levels, whipping around the assembled villagers. The tornado of sound had started to pick up loose bits of bric a brac and hurl them at the wretched crowd, who could only huddle and duck, duck and cover, but had nowhere safe to flee to.
Magpie Jack was being battered and blown about; desperately clinging onto his foot-hold in the tree, while twigs, branches and leaves were all ripped from around him and used to soundly beat him, to slap him off his perch, out of the tree and into the maelstrom, where he would be dashed into a thousand pieces.
Trixie and Bubble clung to the Mayor – who for the first time in his entire life, both political and personal, found himself utterly speechless.
Reverend Phullaposi clutched his cross, he prayed fervently and desperately, while the turmoil continued unabated around him.
Devizes and Nutter were frantically dancing a reel together, arm in arm, screaming and chanting along with the wind’s voice, their booted feet stomping and thudding on the rough wooden plank floor of the podium.
Hariman was still carrying on, as if totally oblivious to what was happening before his very eyes.
“Behold!”
There was a huge crash of thunder and a searing, sizzling bolt of purple-blue lightening. Where once the sour-faced village Doctor had been standing, there was now another, far more imposing figure. It was Hariman still, but in his true form; bigger, though still somewhat crouched; humanoid, but scaly, with bat-like wings and great, gnarled horns protruding from his knobbly forehead. His eyes were now entirely lizard-like; their colour a deep, pulsating amber.
The crowd, which had, to a man and woman, already been terrified before this point, now wigged out completely. They gasped, screamed, and, as one, clawed at each other in their haste to get away from this sudden vision of Hell. In their scrambling, careless haste, they only succeeded in crashing into one another, falling over what was left of the stalls, being hit by the various broken bits of wood, pottery, and food that were being flung around in the wind like the contents of a huge, out of control blender.
Hariman watched, contented. Devizes and Nutter continued their jig, screeching in delight at the chaos they were party to.
Another crash of thunder, and the whistling wind increased the misery still further, forming an ugly accompaniment to the evil choral cacophony and the pulsating, throbbing rhythm that was now all pervading; seeming to come from everywhere, and nowhere, all at once.
Magpie Jack could feel his grip on the branch weakening, starting to slip. He could feel the maelstrom pulling him towards it.
Tobias hung on to the frame of the podium, wishing for all he was worth that this was just a terrible dream, brought on by eating a slightly 'off' kipper and that any moment he would wake up, safe, warm and back by the stove in Ruby’s caravan.
Fat chance. This was all-too-real.
Ruby and Pearl tried to remain fixed where they were, quietly concentrating, while all around them people were running, shouting, screaming, crying, kicking, biting, punching and clawing their way over each other, in their
