Moon Hook I - 9
Part I, Chapter 9 of an ongoing fiction series by Maura McHugh, published weekly for subscribers of Splinister.
Read the first chapter in the series here.
Part 1
Chapter 9
‘Yemm’
‘Together we will wait, patient and dedicated, until Emerald Heart reveals itself.’ Despite the rough recording and the tinny sense of distance, Rónán Yemm’s voice was warm, friendly, and devoid of identifying accent, as if it has been polished into a pleasant smoothness after years of practice.
The voice of death was not strident or demanding, it lulled and seduced.
Daria clicked the pause button on her laptop and sat back on the couch. Earlier, she had lit a fire in the fireplace to welcome natural cheer into the open-plan room. Dots of lamp light doubled in the ink-black windows.
This was the first session of a long and challenging task: reviewing the Emerald Heart Cult voice recordings. According to her source, Daria would be the first person to listen to them in decades. The transcription software she was running would capture the text of his speeches, but she needed to hear Yemm preach and persuade his congregation.
She picked up a pen and in the spiral notebook by her knee she jotted a reminder. Pay attention to accent. When he’s agitated, does it slip?
She placed the notebook on the coffee table and picked up three black and white photographs of Rónán Yemm which lay on top of her folder. He’d spurned being photographed, an unusual trait in a cult leader, so the only one available was the standard shot of Yemm used on countless web sites: a grainy image of him in the middle of the standing stone circle at the centre of Moon Hook, known locally as Na Upthóige. The nice modern translation was ‘The Charmers’. Yemm’s followers surrounded him, echoing the circle of tall, misshapen rocks.
But in the package of documents Daria had received, there were three rare glossy photographs, taken by a visitor and admirer of Yemm’s, several months before the group disappeared into the storm. Known to Daria only as F.M., the photos had been stored in his extensive private collection of occult objects, and only discovered when he passed away last month.
Daria picked one up and examined the image of a tall man with tousled dark hair, wearing an Aran jumper and jeans. He posed near the cliff, pointing out to sea, with half a dozen of his followers arrayed around him. Most of them were women, wearing practical workwear and boots, and they gazed at him in admiration. The impressive O'Conaire stone tower house, rustic and run down made the perfect romantic backdrop. For an amateur photograph it oozed marketable material. Yemm looked heroic, visionary, kind of dreamy, and his cult members exuded the healthy demeanour of people who laboured outside for much of the day.
Daria studied his face, wondering where he came from. The biography he had recounted to people over the years had mutated and changed. Scattered interviews in alternative magazines in the 1970s repeated his claims he was born in Peru, while in another he mentioned he was from Turkey. The journalists faithfully reported his stories of nomadic treks across the world, searching for wise teachers and gurus so he could learn their secret teachings – which all of them granted because of his obvious spiritual calling and exceptional energetic vibration.
Later, after the Night of the Long Journey, when the serious investigators dug into his history, none of the timings made sense or could be confirmed. The elders he used as references didn’t exist or denied they ever met him. Famous activists and actors who had previously dined with him and donated to his great experiment of island communal living disavowed him. Rory Conroy, who’d let the group occupy his family lands on Moon Hook, was already a permanent occupant of a psychiatric hospital in America and could offer no clues why he had agreed to the arrangement in the first place.
Yemm had taken on and discarded names and personalities throughout his life. What little was known about him indicated he drifted through college campuses across America and flirted with memberships of spiritual movements to learn the best enlightenment language and craft the perfect demeanour of acceptable zealot. Over time, he drew attention and supporters who supplied him with finances and access to celebrity circles, yet Yemm never craved a large assembly, and that lent him an air of authenticity. He attracted and refined followers until he gathered a small, dedicated group who would to follow him to the end of the world.
In another photograph taken inside the tower, Yemm sat at the head of a long wooden table, in a room lit by lanterns and candles. Men and women sat on either side, their plates filled with food, but their faces stretched and morphed from being caught mid-movement in a low light shot. Only Yemm’s face was sharp, and stared directly at the camera, his eye sockets shadowed wells in an angular face. Behind him, anchored to the wall, hung a giant deer skull with massive antlers; its black eye pits seeming to mirror Yemm’s.
Daria slid the photograph under another one, uneasy.
In the final image Yemm stood outside with arms upraised, face tipped to a starry night sky. He wore a large woollen brat cloak with heavy fringing. Placed beside him was a table covered in a white satin cloth which hung to the grass. A symbol of a heart surrounded by a circle of waves was embroidered upon it. A statue sat on top of the table. Its curling fish tail was carved from black wood, but its human torso was carbuncled with shells and coral, and its lumpy head was crowned with a ring of shark’s teeth. Clustered about were bowls of wildflowers, fruits and vegetables, stacks of turf, lobster pots, and sacks of rye and potatoes. A huge harpoon speared the ground to one side.
‘Groovy,’ Daria whispered, and then wondered why she spoke so quietly. A wind moaned around the house, and tree branches knocked a beat.
She examined the list of audio files on the secure server she was logged into. They were numbered in order, from 001 to 333. The engineer who had converted the tracks from tape to digital had been paid not to listen to them, and much to Daria’s annoyance, she didn’t have the original cassettes. Her employer had simply stated it was impossible. It was one of several limitations, but she had been in a poor negotiating position when the proposal landed in her lap, saving her from certain homelessness. At least the request for Muireann’s research position had been agreed upon quickly, with rates, finances and contracts promised the next day.
Daria clicked on 002.mp3 and Yemm’s voice boomed out, suddenly loud, as if he stood in front of her.
‘You are not here by accident! You have been drawn to this island for this purpose, to be among this special gathering. Seekers like you, who long for this higher calling. Continue to prove yourself worthy! I am only the vassal, the vessel, of the ocean and its deep dwellers who observe us from beyond. My words are their words, my obedience is your obedience, my faith is your faith.’
Voices cried out, elated: ‘They will lead us through the storm!’
Yemm: ‘The Emerald Heart will open!’
They chorused together: ‘All pain will cease.’
Finally, Yemm: ‘Eternal love, Eternal life. Eternal peace.’
Clapping, laughter, affirmations, and in between the babble a sense of Yemm speaking low and addressing different people.
She paused the recording, rewound ten seconds, leaned in and increased the volume.
‘DARIA!’
The sound blasted the room all around her. She screamed, slapped the touchpad on her laptop, and the din disappeared.
Daria pushed her computer onto the coach, jumped up and looked about.
For the first time she noticed the small speakers in the ceiling. She approached her laptop again and checked its connections. It had suddenly paired with the speakers.
She reduced the volume, rewound and played it again. This time, the only distinct word she could make out was, ‘Dare!’ She had enough expertise to know that the poor quality of the mono recording would make it difficult to isolate different signals and possibly pick out phrases hidden in the noise. Daria knew one or two specialists who might have better luck, but she was unlikely to obtain permission to send the files to them.
Nerves jangled, Daria decided she’d had enough for one day.
She checked the locks, turned off the lights, and lugged her gear back into her bedroom. Daria lay in the comfortable bed, acutely aware of the dense silence, and the unfamiliar room, convinced it would take hours to fall asleep. She conked out in minutes.
Daria dreamed, and she knew she dreamed.
She stood in the crooked glass throat of the house but submerged in aquamarine water, shot through with shafts of light. She was smaller, a child with seaweed hair which floated in curls around her face, and she breathed liquid naturally.
People moved across the panes of glass like old film, flickering. Some were Emerald Heart members, interspersed with old school friends, her grandmother, work mates, bosses, and enemies. They changed, merged, and transformed into new, weird forms with contorted limbs. They grew larger, spread out around the tunnel surface like a slick of dark oil on water.
A vibration in the tunnel became Yemm’s voice, increasing in volume. ‘Daria. Daria. Daria. Dare!’
A thud, and the structure shook as a colossal form collided with the glass.
A bellowed order: ‘Run, Daria, Run!’
Heart thumping, Daria hopped with an astronaut’s gait through the water; clumsy and slow.
Before her, a thick gel seal and the kitchen beyond. Her mother washed dishes at the sink.
Daria opened her mouth but only bubbles of distress emerged.
Yet, her mother turned. An emerald heart blazed in her chest.
Her mother’s green-hued face smiled and held out her hands to Daria just as the leviathan smashed through the glass and seized Daria in its lacerating maw.
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