Dreacues awakes

I

 

The Dragon moon tugged hard and then finally pulled away from the cool water holding on to it, dripping some of the dark liquid back in and then proudly hovering over the Loch as its reflection rippled on the water’s calm surface.  A Dragon moon, you may or may not know, is a full moon that occurs in the second half of the month of March.  Winter has released its icy grip on the land and water alike, spring is yet far away and the Dragons, whose lairs are deep under the murky water, begin to stir. The warming pull of the moon has triggered them and they prepare to awake once again.

Cold blooded as he is, Dreacues can still feel the slightest amount of heat reflected from the huge moon as it penetrates the thirty odd dark feet into the deep.  His huge body can also sense the tug of gravity that the massive orb in its fullness exerts. He moves ever so slightly having rested dormant for several years now. His heart begins to beat more quickly pushing more blood through his veins as his limbs tingle and he begins to wake.  There was no Dragon moon last year and Dreacues had remained silent all that time beneath the surface hidden just under a ledge that protrudes several feet into the water.

Dreacues (Drake-Hues), in this dormant state, could live indefinitely under the loch’s dark waters, absorbing the oxygen necessary to sustain life, through the skin under his scales.  But food is another matter and every fifty years or so, Dreacues must rise up out of the water and feast.  His prey of preference, as all of the legends tell, is a young female virgin of about thirteen or fourteen years.  There is just something about the purity of these girls that draws Dreacues and his kind to them.  Dreacues knows that it is not the girls at all who draw him, but their foolish young suitors with whom he will do battle and then defeat.

A fourteen year old boy is just that, a boy and no matter what weapon he yields, he is far too young, far too inexperienced and insecure to battle Dreacues the mighty and powerful.  In his six hundred and forty-two years, Dreacues has earned his terrible reputation in the local village for killing several young boys!  To this day, the names and stories of these young men killed and young maidens gone missing are still on the tongues of the older men at the village pubs and stores.  The maidens he always eats alive, not leaving so much as a piece of bone, but the young men are usually left lying, unconscious and bleeding, to die on the rocks where they tried vainly to save their fair young maiden from the jaws of Dreacues.

~

In the wee hours of the following morning as the moon is still visible in the brightening sky, two of the older men from the village will visit the loch, and there they will find a young boy of 14 lying dead.  His head has been dashed on a rock and there is much blood dripping from the wound flowing down the rock and into the damp earth.  They will know right away that the dreaded Dreacues must have come out of his lair in the loch last night.  “I told you it was a Dragon moon last night.”  One of the men finding the boy says to the other.  “The boy must have been with a young maiden from the village, but who was it, what could they have been doing up here in the night?” 

“What do you think they could have been doing?” The other repeats. “Have you forgotten what it is like to be young yerself mon?” He asks in disgust.

Then the two tie the body across the back of one of the horses and ride slowly back to the village discussing what terrible things must certainly have happened to the young man as he fought valiantly.

Back at the village, the boy’s body is taken to the doctor’s office and a search of every house is begun by the concerned good men of the village… until the truth is discovered.  At the home of Malcolm McKinney, there is turmoil all about.  Malcolm and his good wife Sheila are running around as Sheila is calling out “Aileen… Drew... Aileen… Drew!”

“My young daughter Aileen is gone missing."  Malcolm shouts to the good men as they approach on their horses who all quickly come to a stop at the same time raising similar clouds of dust.  “Aye mon, and me boy’s gone too!” He says as the good men dismount and their horses begin to rest.

Author's Note

This is a revision of the chapter posted last year.