The Dark is Rising

‘But I thought you were Paul McBride, how.., how? How did you do that? You looked like him, you minced like him, you exhude an air of entitlement and superiority like him, you seemed super sensitive to your parents ever finding out you’re gay… What, what…?’

McGillivan was confused. He had obviously never encountered Jorg Albertz before and wouldn’t know that the merest suggestion from him would have you believing he was the Archbishop of Canterbury. I knew straight away of course. Well, as soon as his spell started to wear off. It had taken McGillivan by surprise though and he wasn’t taking it well and was now leaping around the beach naked and tearing his hair out at the thought of giving away his plans to someone so closely associated with the subject of his hatred while Mad Joe O’Rourke had retreated back to the cave and was covering himself with half gnawed body parts.
Albertz, exhaled and turned from the sea to face us.
‘I just had to be sure. We suspected but you were such a nonentity we just had to be sure it was you who was getting up to all sorts of mischief, wasting peoples time by getting the Celtic Internet Mafia all riled up, sullying the good name of Rangers every opportunity you could get, stalking Leggo…’
‘So what are you going to do now, set the might of Rangers on me?’ sneered McGillivan, becoming slightly erect.
‘Oh no need to involve Rangers…’ said Albertz, ‘When one can get Celtic to do our dirty work for us.’
And on the horizon there was a flash.

‘You see McGillivan,’ smiled Albertz. ‘I have access to Lawwell’s emergency phone number for reporting anti-Irish racism and I called in the co-ordinates of the man who wrote the Famine Song. My guess is that’s the Port Glasgow Fenian Navy on the horizon and that flash was some heavy ordinance coming your way.’
It was true, after the flash came the report of a canon which rumbled over the sea towards us, a shell obviously following.
‘But it’ll kill you too,’ stuttered Phil.
‘I doubt it,’ laughed Albertz and from out of the waves reached two huge iron tentacles which wrapped themselves around me and Albertz and we were lifted off the ground and pulled away from the beach with a jolt just as an explosion rocked the shore.  It was the Nautilus – the same underwater vessel which had spirited me and the Traynor from Silence, the same vessel captained by a mysterious figure who stood atop the grand iron beast watching as we were pulled in towards him away from the destruction by the mouth of the cave. As the smoke cleared I could just make out the body of McGillivan, pierced by shrapnel and pinned to a rock in an obscene shape which made him look as if he was having a wank. Joe O’Rourke had ventured out of his hiding hole in the cave and was rocking back and forward in front of Phil’s body and seemed to be trying to feed it a leg.
‘Should we put him out of his misery, Cap’n?’ shouted a sailor on the turret, aiming his long range rifle at O’Rourke.
The dark figure of the Captain gazed upon the harrowing scene and shook his head.
‘No, he’s more to be pitied than hated. He’s harmless now, leave him be,’ and as the tentacles lowered me and Albertz onto the deck of the Nautilus we looked up as the clouds parted and an almost full moon illuminated the proud figure of the Captain and Richard Gough looked down, smiled and winked at me.