SCRAVIR III news

After months in the lacklight, sheltered from prying eyes, the third part of SCRAVIR is about to meet its proofreader …

This instalment of the bestselling contemporary Gothic horror takes us forwards and backwards. To whet your appetites, here is an extract from the origin story that sheds light on a fractured childhood. The story takes us back a very long way … Enjoy!

ORIGINS

I was born during the reign of Athanaric in the mountains of what the Romans had called Dacia Inferior until they were kicked out. We lived deep in the forest, three days’ walk from the ruins of a Roman fort in a place that would later be called Drumul Carului.

Although the Romans had gone, wars had not left with them. They kept coming back for more, and twice the village was moved to keep us away from fighting armies. The Romans and many others. My father Vidigoia, named after our Thervingian hero who was killed in 332 in battle, was a woodsman when not being a warrior. My mother was called Branwen. She was beautiful with long black hair and big blue eyes. She looked after us, me and my three siblings. I was the youngest.

The mountain forests were a place of both refuge and fear and my mother would beat us if we ventured too far. The golden rule was that we must always be close enough to shout for help because there were many bears and wolves. The adults would also scare us with stories about the ghost men who were like people but thin as skeletons. They lived in caves and would eat children if they caught them.

My siblings would take me with them to find mushrooms in the autumn sunshine. The air was still thick with bees and I was excited because I hoped we would also find a hive full of honey. We ran beneath the trees, stamping our feet hard to shake the ground and scare off any snakes, and climbed the mountain to the waterfall where we were sometimes allowed to splash about.

The sun was shining and there were lots of berries and my sister Wilda laughed when I insisted I hadn’t eaten anything. Why is your face purple with berry juice then, skinny ribs? she asked. They all called me skinny ribs. I was very cross to have been betrayed by the berries. I must have been four years old.

My mother was shouting. My brother Eriulf, who had the loudest voice, shouted back that we were fine. Because he was eight he was allowed to carry a real knife. It was heavy and as long as my arm and I was very jealous. We crossed the stream and when we reached the overhanging rocks I shivered. The air was damp and we were happy to find many mushrooms growing in the moss and leaf litter. We were so busy filling our basket that we forget to keep a lookout for wild animals.

It was my sister Beyla who found him sleeping by the tree. We should all have run away but he looked so peaceful with his fluffy round ears and big black nose. We didn’t poke him or make a noise or anything. The mother bear must have been up in the tree. Suddenly she was next to us. She was huge and she smacked Beyla and Eriulf so hard they flew in the air and by the time they landed they were dead and Wilda was running away screaming for the adults to help us. The baby bear sat up beside me and together we watched his mother race after Wilda. I just knew it was going to be bad.

Everything seemed to happen at once. A hand with a rock hit the baby bear so hard that his head made a cracking noise and he fell down and there was blood everywhere. I closed my eyes waiting for the rock to hit me but instead I felt myself being picked up and pressed hard against something warm that smelled really bad. Then I was moving fast and someone was running. When I tried to open my eyes I could only see dirty skin and rags right up against my face. It sounded like there were several people calling out as they ran but if they were speaking then I couldn’t understand what they were saying. My body was being shaken about like a dead rabbit on a hunter’s spear and I decided it was best not to move or make a sound. They were climbing up among the rocks. I wondered how long it would be before the mother bear turned back from killing Wilda and caught up with us all. She must have seen her dead cub by now and would be very angry.

But she didn’t catch us and after a while we were moving less quickly and I dared to open one eye again to see what was happening.

There were four ghost people. I was sure that is what they were because they were so thin, their limbs skinny as sticks. I had escaped the bear only to be eaten by ghost men! One of them must have been a ghost woman because she had breasts that swung left and right, as empty as socks. She was carrying the dead bear cub and, hanging over the shoulder of one of the men, was Eriulf, his head shaking about, his mouth hanging open.

They were hurrying close to a rock face, and then the rock was above our heads and suddenly it was dark. I was dropped on the floor beside Eriulf and the dead bear cub and I lay there for a few minutes not daring to turn my head or move my body. I looked up at the top of my eyes and could see the entrance to the cave. There were two ghost men standing near the outside, carrying spears. If I got up quickly and ran then maybe I could get past them and run home.

But where was home? What if I got lost in the forest? Wouldn’t the bear mother be out there looking for me? I reached out a hand very very slowly until I could reach Eriulf’s hand and I held it tightly, tears rolling down my face. If only he wasn’t dead. If only he would wake up. He was eight and would be bound to have a good plan and together we would escape and get home and …

I was grabbed by the neck and yanked up into the air. The face looking down at me was fuzzy and rough like a moss-covered rock. The mouth was smiling but there were only two yellow teeth. The skin was rough and flaking and the eyes were bloodshot.

I wriggled to get away from his foul-smelling breath. The ghost man grunted and dropped me to the ground and kicked me. Before I could think to roll away he touched me with a bony fingertip and immediately my arms and legs felt too tired to move. I watched him walk away and I waited and waited until I was so tired I fell asleep.

 When I woke up I could smell food and smoke. I was really hungry. With my eyes closed I reached out a hand to touch Eriulf but there was only dust and rock. I reached out my other hand to touch the baby bear but there was nothing there either. Maybe they were both eating with the ghost men which wasn’t fair because I was hungry too. Everyone was eating something but I had nothing! So I opened my eyes.

Light was dancing on the roof of the cave and there were big shadows. The ghost men were round a fire laughing and eating. I sat up. If I was quick and very quiet I could run outside before anyone could catch me. But then I would be outside all by myself and it was dark in the forest and I would fall and be eaten by wolves and bears. Maybe if I was good the ghost men would feed me and give me water and then I could sleep and go home when the sun returned.

I stood up and walked towards the fire. At first I couldn’t see anything because the ghost men were sitting on the ground and they all had their backs to me and I had to stand on tiptoes to see over their shoulders. Then I saw what they were eating and I made a sound and one of them turned and caught me and lifted me into the air.

They were eating the bear cub and Eriulf, tearing off arms and legs and eating them! I shouted and someone hit me so hard everything went black.

 They didn’t eat me. And they didn’t take me home either.

They kept me like a dog. I was fed and expected to entertain them. In the day I was a lookout on a chain, tasked with keeping an eye out for trouble in the forest. By night I was there to catch scraps thrown from the stone table or made to jump through hoops or chase mice. There was plenty to eat and the food was like the food at home; deer and rabbits, rye bread, cabbages and turnips.

Why had they spared me my life? The only reason I could formulate, and this I did not do for several years becuse I was too young to make sense of such things, was that I was myself odd. My skin was very white, as was my hair and my eyes were pink. In some way, like my captors, I was unlike other people. Combined with other things that happened to me I would eventually wonder if I were in fact a ghost child?

Once, many days after they had killed my siblings, we all went down the mountain towards my home. I didn’t say anything. For a start I had no idea if they would understand a word I said, their language was unintelligible to me. Secondly, I thought that they might not know where they were heading and that, if I was lucky, we might stumble into the village and my parents would see me and there would be a big fight and the ghost people would all be killed and I would be saved and life would be almost normal again. But without my brother and sisters. Maybe my parents would make new ones and …

We passed the waterfall. If I shouted my mother would hear me! I tried to run ahead but the chain held me back so I stopped and walked slowly with the ghost people down the path that led to …

… the empty village.

Two of the houses had been burnt to the ground. Our house was still standing though the turnips and cabbages had all been dug up. I couldn’t help myself and I started shouting mother! father! at the top of my voice.

No one came.

The ghost people were laughing and chattering. They let go of my chain and I ran into the house still shouting. It smelled very bad inside and I saw a body lying on the bed, covered in flies. I knew in that moment that the ghost people had not eaten my mother. But two crows were pecking at her and I shouted angrily at them. As I backed away I saw on the floor a cloth that I recognised as my mother’s cloak and beside it her beautiful eagle brooch. I picked it up and I was about to kiss it when the ghost woman came into the house behind me and grabbed my chain and dragged me outside. She saw I was holding something tightly in my right hand and shouted at me but I ignored her. Her fingers were very very strong. As she gripped my wrist I felt a strange tingling deep inside my head and in my arm. My arm muscles were becoming weak. I howled out and she prised open my hand and saw the brooch and took it and slapped me hard. Then the other ghost people were all laughing and the ghost woman was angry. Scowling, she gave me back the brooch. My arm still felt funny and my fingers wouldn’t wrap round the brooch so I took the brooch in my left hand. The strange feeling inside my head stayed there for hours and it would be many days before my strength returned and I could hold anything in my right hand.

As she dragged me through the garden I saw something else and quickly bent down to pick it up; the small cow-shaped flask that my father gave Wilda for her birthday when he came back from fighting far away.

The brooch and the cow-shaped flask were the only things I took from my parents’ home and I never went there again. I guessed that the ghost people must have come and killed everyone and burnt the houses. Or perhaps it was outsiders. Either way I was alone in the world with only the ghost people to look after me.

For eight years I lived with the ghost people, like Romulus and Remus brought up in the forest by wolves.. From time to time I wondered why they did not kill and eat me, they killed and ate almost everything else that came close to them. Eventually I decided that it must be for two reasons, both related to my size.

I was no threat to them except, perhaps, that I might shout out and give their presence away to others. They controlled any urge that I might have to do such a thing by regularly reminding me how quickly my life would end if I brought them trouble. I suffered many beatings.

My stature enabled me to access spaces too small for them. I never saw a ghost child, only adults. Had they killed them all? I don’t know, but when we were hunting and they needed to access a confined space, to flush out a rabbit or enter a house through a window in order to steal food, I was put to work. And they would also use me as a decoy. In a clearing or on a path deep in the forest I would be tied to a tree and left to attract the attention of passersby. Then, when wild animals or people approached me, either to release me or to eat me, the ghost people would rush from their hiding places with swords and cudgels and blood would flow. This became a preferred method of hunting.

Secondly, as I said before, I was entertainment. With no children of their own, I seemed to provide many of them with a form of solace or comfort. In the evenings, after we had eaten they would encourage me to play. One of the ghost men gave me a spinning top that I think must have been stolen from a village they had attacked and they would watch and laugh at my hopeless attempts to make it work. The ghost woman made me clothes, little more than rags refashioned from torn fragments of cloth, and I would be encouraged to dance. In short I had, in return for my life, shelter and food, become a possession.

Even at that young age I was smart. I learned quickly, saw their strengths and weaknesses, and came to understand what set them apart from ordinary humans. They had few songs and sometimes seemed to exist in a place between the world of brute animals and the brutal world of human beings. On the other hand the cave was covered in paintings, mainly of animals and hunters, some of them very beautiful. There was also an area that was covered in a pattern of human hands in different colours and I was very proud when one day I was invited to add my hand to the pattern. I was told where on the wall to place my hand, then shown how to blow paint at my hand through a bone. It sprayed all over the place and when I moved my hand away we could all see the shape of it one the cave wall. The smallest hand of all! Thinking back I realise there must have been a hundred handprints or more on that wall so I guess they must have lived there a long time.

The scravir did not appear to have names for each other, though maybe I simply did not understand how they communicated. Secretly I gave them names, for my own benefit: Oak – the biggest man in the group, Angry Bear, One-eye, Bonebreaker, Bully, Knife, Scar, Catface, Firemaker, Thin, and Biter – the only woman. I never spoke their names outloud, indeed I never spoke at all, deducing it would be safer to appear mute.

I discovered that the tingling sensation I had felt when the ghost woman grabbed my arm to take my mother’s brooch was more than an accident or illusion. I saw them, on many occasions, use this ability to weaken the resistence of their prey by holding it firmly. Even strong animals such as wolves could be pacified in this way and reduced to wimpering cowering wretches. One day, when I must have been around eight years of age, I was allowed to help skin a wolf that the group had killed. The furs were kept for clothing or bedding. On removing the fur I was surprised to see that one of the creature’s legs was almost without muscles. Having seen the animal rush towards me hours earlier when I was tied to a tree in the forest, I knew that the animal had not been limping and was not lame. From that day on I paid closer attention to what was happening around me and came to understand that the ghost people had the power to somehow change the bodies of their prey just by touching them.

Some were much better at this than others. With eleven adults in the group, tempers would sometimes flare up. When I was first captured I would hide when we were in the cave to avoid getting a beating whenever anyone was angry but over time I grew bolder and I would sleep closer to the warmth of the fire. That enabled me to observe the interactions of the group more closely.

The fights, when they happened, were generally short and as savage as those of fighting dogs. I would lie in the shadows pretending to be asleep until I became so sleepy that I would drift off. One night in late summer I was drifting to asleep when there was a sudden outburst of groaning and shouting. Through lidded eyes I peeked at what was happening. The biggest man, Oak, had stood up and now threw Catface so hard that he almost fell in the fire. Oak was all over him, kicking and punching. I heard a bone breaking. Then, as Catface was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and hauled to his feet I saw him reach out and grab Oak’s calf. There was dark evil in his eyes as he absorbed the blows raining down on him.

All at once the tables were turned. Oak’s eyes grew large and he howled aloud and collapsed to the floor. Catface would normally have run away but tonight he did not run. He stood his ground and gripped Oak’s leg more tightly. Before my disbelieving eyes I saw the big man’s calf muscle shrinking until his left leg was just skin and bone. Whatever was happening seemed to give the Catface strength. He now grabbed his Oak’s other leg. Oak howled in rage but could do nothing to protect himself.

It seemed that this turn of events encouraged one of the other ghost men, Scar, who joined Catface in the fight, grabbing Oak’s shoulder and clenching it hard. In seconds Oak’s thick shoulder was shrinking.

It was like watching ice melt. In five minutes the battle was done. As I lay there, peeping through my fingers, I saw all the ghost people gather round Oak and put their hands on him. Before my eyes Oak’s body shrank until all that was left was a skin bag full of bones. In contrast, Catface and Scar and the others seemed to have put on weight. They stood over Oak, roaring and waving their fists and I became aware that I was feeling the strange tingling sensation inside my head as I had done when Biter had grabbed my hand several years earlier.

Whatever the ghost man did to their prey, it appeared that some could do the same to each other. Was Oak dead? The buzzing at the back of my head would not go away. Was I really awake or was I dreaming? What was happening to me? I closed my eyes and wished and wished the pictures would go away.

When I awoke I saw that Oak had gone. I never saw him again. Most of the group had gone off hunting without me that morning, only Biter remained in the cave. She saw me rubbing the back of my head and came over with a cup of water. As she touched my shoulder to comfort me I felt the tingling again, not just in my shoulder but also in my head. And somehow she felt it too. She peered into my eyes and smiled her four-toothed smile. Her eyes narrowed and there was a surge of heat inside my head. I stared back at her and focused on the sensation in my skull. How was she doing this? What was she doing in my head? All at once I was angry and tried to push her out of my head. I didn’t know how or what I was doing, I was just mad at her invading me.

What happened next changed my life.

© C M Vassie 2025