Nobody else responds to Simon, engrossed as they are in the haunting images on the walls. Simon's flashlight beam plays along the wall. The hunting and farming scenes give way to a great gathering, crowds of people depicted as prostrating themselves and pressing their foreheads to the ground. At the front of the line, a tall female figure, wearing the antlers of an Irish elk like a crown, kneels and holds a baby aloft.
"Simon?" Kitty asks, her voice curiously level. "What is this? What are they doing to that little baby?"
"I…I think this is showing the rites of Crom Cruach," Simon says. "There's a tradition that long ago in Ireland, in exchange for great harvests of grain, the people would sacrifice their firstborn to the god Crom Cruach at the Place of Adoration."
He moves the flashlight beam onwards, in the direction that the antler-headed woman is offering the baby. There, among standing stones recognizable as those of Glenkildove, stands a figure much taller and broader than any of the human beings, its claws raised in exultation, its head that of a snarling red-black wolf.
"Crom Cruach," says Simon, his voice shaky.
"The Beast…," whispers Cormac, from somewhere in the shadows.
I feel horror and revulsion at the sight before us.
I feel mesmerized, fascinated.
I am simply taking in the details, as objectively and neutrally as I can.
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