Sleepy English Villages

The chill of October lingered heavily in the air as Zemo stepped off the train at Blackwood Station. A pall hung over the English countryside, the rolling fog wrapping itself around the station like a shroud, dampening the already muted sounds of the countryside. 

Zemo adjusted his trench coat, his fingers brushing the golden revolver holstered beneath it. He wasn’t one to carry firearms lightly, but the rumours surrounding Clifftop Manor made him take no chances. Behind him, Bucky heaved their shared trunk off the train with a grunt, his metallic bicep straining beneath his coat.

He dropped the trunk at his feet. “What on Earth have you got in here, Hel?” he grated, as Zemo started to stride to the exit.

“Everything,” answered Zemo over his shoulder.

“Tell me again why you dragged me out to the middle of nowhere for this,” Bucky grumbled, wiping soot from his gloves.

“Because you owe me, James, remember?” Zemo said without looking back. “That fiasco in Cardiff with the counterfeiters? This is payback.”

Bucky slung the trunk over his vibranium shoulder, his metal arm easily taking the weight. Not that his other arm couldn’t. He was a SuperSoldier after all. He rolled his eyes. “I distinctly remember you being the one to throw a whiskey bottle at the constable. I just got caught in the crossfire.”

Zemo smirked. “Well, we’re here now. You might as well make yourself useful.”

The pair made their way to the waiting car, where Harold Pritchard, a jittery young man, all elbows and knees, stood fumbling with his hat.

“Baron Zemo, Sergeant Barnes?” Harold asked nervously . “Harold Pritchard, sirs,” he stammered. “The mayor’s assistant. I was sent to escort you.”

“Indeed,” Zemo replied. “Let’s not waste time.”

“Can I get that for you?” he asked Bucky, reaching for the trunk.

Zemo tilted his head. Bucky gave him a look, then looked back at Harold. “Nah,” he said, “just open the boot.”

As Harold drove them through the fog-shrouded countryside, Bucky leaned over to Zemo. “So, what’s the story here? Haunted manor? Family curse?” He grunted. “Let me guess. Someone saw a ghost and fainted.”

Zemo shot him a look. “Lord Blackwood carved symbols into the floor with a sword before shooting himself. Does that sound like someone who saw a ghost to you?”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Could’ve been a particularly ugly ghost.”

Zemo didn’t dignify that with a response.

Clifftop Manor loomed ahead, a sprawling estate perched precariously on the edge of a cliff overlooking the turbulent grey sea. It was said to be cursed, its lineage marred by disappearances, murder, and now, madness.

“Cheerful place,” Bucky muttered. “I can see why you insisted we visit.”

*

When they arrived, the manor loomed over them, its turrets clawing at the sky. Zemo noted the signs of decay, the ivy strangling the stone walls, the windows clouded with grime. But there was also something more. A weight hung in the air, oppressive and wrong, the ivy-covered walls seeming to shift in the dim light.

Inside, the drawing room had been hastily cleaned, but the faint smell of blood lingered. Zemo crouched by the scene, running his gloved fingers over the carved symbols in the floor that Lord Blackwood had left behind. The symbols were jagged, chaotic, but there was a pattern, a circle of strange sigils surrounding the outline of something monstrous, its shape writhing even as he looked at it.

“What do you make of these?” he asked, his brow furrowed.

Bucky knelt beside him, squinting at the jagged lines. “Could be gibberish. Or, I don’t know, ancient hieroglyphs? I didn’t take demonology at college.”

“They’re not gibberish, James,” Zemo said sharply. “There’s a pattern here.”

“They said he was screaming about the sea,” Harold offered nervously, standing at a safe distance. “About ‘it’ waking up.”

Zemo frowned. The stories of ancient, slumbering horrors were whispers in back-alley pubs and occult circles, but Blackwood’s family had long been tied to such tales. “Where’s the sword?” he asked sharply.

Harold retrieved it from the constable stationed nearby. It was no ordinary weapon. This blade gleamed unnaturally, the etchings along its edge humming faintly as if alive. Zemo hefted it, his arm tingling from the strange energy it emitted. Beside the blade, his revolver felt almost primitive.

“Do you believe in curses, Baron?” Harold asked, his voice shaking.

“No,” Zemo replied, though the lie sat uneasily on his tongue. “But I believe in desperation. And Blackwood clearly believed he was fighting something.”

Bucky glanced at the blade, held so expertly in Zemo’s elegant gloved hand. “And this belonged to Blackwood? Nice craftsmanship. Shame about the blood on it.” He gave Zemo a look. “You think the sword made him do it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Zemo said. “Weapons don’t - ” He stopped mid-sentence as his fingers brushed the carvings on the blade, and a definite pulse of energy ran up his arm.

“What?” Bucky asked, his sarcastic tone evaporating.

Zemo stood slowly, his expression grim. “Something’s wrong here, James. This isn’t just a murder. There’s something bigger.”

*

That night, Zemo and Bucky stayed at the manor, poring over Lord Blackwood’s journal, which chronicled his descent into madness. He had written of dreams, of a shadowed figure rising from the depths of the sea, its many limbs writhing, its form impossible to comprehend. “It calls to me,” he had scrawled in one entry, the ink smeared as though written by a trembling hand. “The Sleeper beneath the waves. It will wake, and the world will crumble.”

“‘The Sleeper beneath the waves,’” Bucky read aloud, his voice dripping with skepticism. “Sounds like a bad pulp novel. What’s next? A cult sacrificing goats to the moon?”

Zemo didn’t look up from the page he was studying. “He was terrified, James. Whatever he saw, or thought he saw, it was enough to drive him mad.”

Bucky leaned back in his chair, balancing it precariously on two legs. “You’re telling me a grown man had a breakdown over a bad dream?”

Before Zemo could respond, the manor shook violently.

Bucky toppled backward with a loud crash. “Oh, for the love of - what now?”

Zemo was already moving, grabbing his revolver and Blackwood‘s sword. He looked at the time. Midnight. “That was no mere earthquake.”

“You don’t say,” grated Bucky, standing, checking his knives, loosening his guns.

The tremor wasn’t natural. The vibrations seemed to pulse, rhythmic, like the heartbeat of something massive. From the cliffs outside, a low, guttural sound echoed across the land. It was not a sound meant for human ears; it burrowed into their mind, filling their heads with a dread they hadn’t thought possible.

The two of them ran to the balcony, where the sea churned and boiled. A massive shadow loomed beneath the waves, its shape shifting and writhing in a way that defied comprehension, its form obscured by the mist but undeniably colossal. 

Tentacles writhed, each one as large as a ship’s mast, and breached the surface. Its eyes, glowing, unholy, pierced the darkness, and a guttural roar filled the air.

The sight was enough to steal their breath, but Zemo forced himself to move. Whatever this was, it had to be stopped.

Bucky stared, his usual sarcasm gone. “Okay, so, not a goat cult.”

“I’m so glad we are finally on the same page,” Zemo muttered, tightening his grip on the sword. “That thing shouldn’t exist,” he snapped. “And we’re going to send it back.”

“Any bright ideas how?” Bucky asked, his voice tight.

Zemo glanced at him. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Try me.”

Zemo strapped the sword to his belt and Bucky loaded his revolver with silver-tipped bullets. An eccentric choice, but one they had learned often proved useful when the unnatural came knocking. 

Bucky rotated his metal arm around his shoulder joint, cricked his neck and, together, they descended into the manor’s hidden tunnels, guided by the strange carvings Blackwood had left behind.

*

The tunnels led them to a cavern beneath the cliffs. A cavern open on one side to the sea, their view of which was blotted out by the monstrous silhouette of the behemoth in the boiling ocean, backlit by a blood red moon.

The air grew heavier with each precarious step into the cavern. Rivulets of water were a slip hazard on the ground. The glow from the carvings etched into the walls bathed the space in an eerie blue light.

“This place screams ‘bad idea,’” Bucky said.

“And yet, here we are,” said Zemo.

At the centre of the cavern, they found an altar. It was a massive slab of black obsidian, black as pitch, slick with seawater. 

The ancient wall carvings pulsed faintly, casting flickering shadows throughout the cavern. The language they couldn’t read but they instinctively understood: Seal the gate, or the Sleeper wakes.

Bucky eyed the altar warily, then the writhing shape outside. “Another cave. Another altar,” he said. He turned to Zemo, cocked his head towards the behemoth outside. “So, what’s the plan? We yell at it until it goes away?”

Zemo unsheathed the sword, its energy flaring to life. “We seal the gate.”

Bucky drew his pistol, glancing nervously around. “Of course we do. Because sealing ancient, cursed gates is a thing we’re qualified to do.”

The shadows in the cavern seemed to come alive as Zemo drew the sword. They started twisting on the walls, writhing in place, then moving away from the walls, reaching out for them.

The cavern shook violently as the Sleeper roared, its voice a thunderclap of madness, its monstrous form rising higher above the cliffs, cutting off the light from the moon. 

The only light in the cavern now, came from the flickering eldritch glow from the carvings on the walls around them. But it was more than enough.

Zemo didn’t hesitate. He gritted his teeth, raised the sword, its strange energy flaring, and drove it into the altar, the impact sending a shockwave through the room. The carvings on the walls flared brighter, as if the light was fighting back the encroaching darkness.

“Any chance this thing has an off switch?” Bucky shouted, trying to keep his balance on the slippery floor, as the cavern continued to shake.

“Just keep those shadows off me!” Zemo shouted back, fighting to keep the sword in place until the ritual was complete. The altar seemed to be fighting back, resisting him. He had a strange sudden vision of this being exactly the opposite of what the sword in the stone must have been like.

Bucky fired into the writhing reaching shadows, each shot echoing in the cavern like thunder, each silver bullet flaring within the darkness, creating a brief cloud of illumination. The light from the sword grew brighter, its symbols burning into Zemo’s vision.

The roar grew louder, deafening… then abruptly stopped. 

The trembling ceased. 

For a moment, there was silence.

And outside, the sea calmed, the monstrous form retreating.

The only sound they could hear was the ordinary sound of the surf against the rocks, and the wind through the cave.

Zemo pulled the sword free, breathing heavily. Bucky holstered his pistol, shaking his head. “Well, that was fun. Let’s never do it again.”

*

By dawn, the manor was eerily quiet. The oppressive weight in the air was gone, though Zemo and Bucky suspected the villagers would steer clear of Clifftop Manor for generations. 

They stood at the cliff edge, watching the now calm sea and the waves lapping gently against the shore. Of the Sleeper, there was no sign.

“You think it’s over?” Bucky asked.

No,” Zemo said quietly. “But it’s asleep again. For now.”

Bucky glanced at him. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

Zemo smirked. “You know me too well.”

“Unfortunately,” muttered Bucky.

They turned and began the long walk back to the village, to the train station, leaving Clifftop Manor, and the horrors beneath the waves, behind them.

***