Hellmouth

by Giles Kristian

It is chaos. A storm within a storm as Galien climbs to his feet, turns, deflects a spear-thrust with his sword and takes a man’s head, which thumps into the mud, staring up at the grey sky. A life gone in a half-breath.

‘Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.’

In psalm and parable, threats veiled in riddle. Such men of words and scrawled ink have always set his flesh crawling. The way they swept into a place like an ill wind, their words entwined in the Roman tongue, the spectre of damnation following them like a shadow.

A man builds a castle to keep others out. But this castle, Galien knows as sure as the thump of his heart in his chest, was built to keep something in.

The corpses hang there amongst and above them, naked as infants. A forest of flesh. Unyoked from the earth itself, like souls ascending to heaven. Or descending to Hell.

They all crave violence now, because in violence there is no place for thought, and thought in this place is like a sickness.

‘The hole is the source of the evil,’ the priest replies. ‘It is the mouth of Hell. His Holiness Pope Gregory had the castle built to keep that evil in. To imprison it.’

Located about an hour north of Prague on the top of a steep, rocky cliff in the Czech countryside, Houska Castle is shrouded in myth and legend. The castle was constructed in the second half of the 13th century, probably on the orders of Ottokar II of Bohemia, and it is said to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Strangely for a medieval castle, it was built in a place of no strategic value, surrounded by forest, swamp and mountain. Some of its windows are fake, and its defences were built facing the inner courtyard, rather than facing outward. It is as if the castle was built not to keep others out, but rather to keep something in. According to folklore, Houska Castle was constructed over a large hole in the ground which was thought to be a gateway to Hell. That hole was so deep that no one could see the bottom of it. Legend has it that half-animal, half-human creatures would crawl out from the pit at night, and that black, winged creatures would attack locals and drag them down into the hole. Prisoners are said to have been cast into the hole, too. On one occasion, a young man was promised a pardon if he agreed to be lowered by rope into the bottomless pit and then to report back what he saw. Seconds after he had disappeared into the darkness, he began screaming and begging to be pulled back up. When he was brought up to the surface, he looked to have aged thirty years and his hair had turned white. So disturbed was he by what he had experienced down there, t...