Enoch's Well

The St Andrew's Visitor

The wind had been growling at the windows of Enoch’s Well since mid-afternoon, the kind of wind that doesn’t just rattle the panes, but tries to negotiate entry like a pushy relative at Christmas. Inside, the pub felt as it always did in winter: warm, dim, and slightly confused about what century it was meant to be in.

To the untrained eye, Enoch’s Well looked like any old pub on the Dee coast. But to those with the right kind of sight or the wrong kind of luck, it appeared… different. Larger on the inside. Older. A place that remembered things long after the people who lived them had forgotten.

Every visitor saw it differently: fishermen saw a weather-beaten inn clinging to the tide, walkers saw a cosy coastal pub that definitely wasn’t there last week and couldn’t be found on TripAdviser and supernatural beings saw something closer to a fortified lighthouse.

All of them were right. Or wrong. Usually both.

Enoch kept it that way because the Well was neutral ground. Always had been. Always would be. And he enforced that rule with the weary experience of a man who’d seen too many creatures try to settle old grudges over pints of mild.

It was that kind of night: wind howling, log fire cracking, Ty the german shepherd sprawled in front of the hearth like a furry guardian of warmth. An Angel and a Demon were arguing over darts as if civilisation depended on it. They were regulars now, Tuesdays and Thursdays like clockwork, other days when they were bored, and darts was their thing ever since Enoch banned them from arguing theology at the bar.

“No miracles!” the Demon complained as the Angel sank a treble twenty.

“That wasn’t a miracle,” the Angel replied, glowing smugly. “It was physics. Something you wouldn’t understand.”

Sab, the pub bat (yes, bat! ) a small, black, winged agent of chaos who claimed (loudly) to be the true source of the name “Black Sabbath”, yes, THAT Black Sabbath… and a personal friend of the Osbournes, fluttered down from the rafters.

“Oi! Keep it down!” he squeaked. “Some of us are tryin’ ta listen to the storm! Sounds like it’s plottin’ something!”

Conks, the resident archaeologist of all things corporeal, spiritual, and alcoholic, snorted into his pint. “You said that last week.”

“Yeah,” Sab shot back, “an’ it was plotting. It nicked the beer barrel.”

Everyone ignored him. As usual.

Behind the bar, Enoch muttered darkly about heating costs and the “bloody nerve of the North Sea thinkin’ it can fling weather at his windows like a drunk uncle tryin’ to kick the door in”

On the back shelf sat the Button Box, a small wooden cabinet with far too many red buttons, each labelled in a handwriting no one could read. The regulars had experienced one of the buttons change the pub’s location “a smidge.” Another apparently summoned a delivery from somewhere you didn’t want to know. And one button, the second red one, Enoch had sworn never to press unless things were properly dire.

Johnny Boy, one of the longest-serving residents of the pub, whom no one could quite classify as staff, guest, owner, or barfly, often tried guessing which button did what. Johnny Boy, as Enoch frequently pointed out, was not bright at times.

“That one?”
“No.”
“This one?”
“No.”
“What about….”
“Johnny lad, if you press that one, we’ll spend the next six hours in a dimension full o’ shrieking, sentient haddock. Sit down.” The wind howled. Ty huffed.

The Angel hit a bullseye and the Demon swore in three ancient languages. It was, all in all, a very normal evening at the Well. Then the door opened. And the bell didn’t ring.

That had never happened before.

A man stepped inside. Barefoot and dripping seawater that steamed faintly on the warm floorboards. He was clothed in a fisherman’s jumper that looked older than half the patrons combined and his hair was hanging in wet ropes. His skin was touched with that pale-blue sheen of someone who’s stood too long in a North Sea gale.

Ty tilted his head and growled, not in fear, but in the way dogs do when the world shifts slightly sideways. Enoch’s polishing cloth froze mid-circle.

The Demon looked up from his darts and muttered, “Oh, that’s not good.” The Angel folded his wings (politely) and said nothing at all.

Sab hovered cautiously. “Whatever he is, he’s drippin’ ambience all over the place, reminds me of that gig where Ozzy threw a bucket of something over the crowd — and we never did agree on what the liquid actually was.”

The stranger nodded once, not at the room, but at Enoch specifically, like he’d walked through half the world to get to this exact doorstep.

“Evenin’,” he said, in a voice shaped by salt and storms and the long, rounded vowels of the Orkney isles.

Enoch narrowed his eyes. “Yer makin’ a puddle, lad.”

“Aye,” the man replied. “Sea clings to what was hers.”

Conks whispered behind his hand, “Selkie.”

Johnny Boy shook his head. “Too tall. And selkies don’t hang around bars this late.” The stranger reached the bar, placed a rune-marked coin down, and said,
“Whisky. For the road that isn’t a road.”

Enoch nodded without blinking. “Double it is then.”

As he drank, water pooled beneath his chair…then turned to sand. Fine, pale, tidal sand that vanished as quickly as it formed.

Sab squeaked. “See? SEE? I told ya the storm was plottin’ something!”

“Shush,” said the Angel.

“Don’t ‘shush’ me, cloud boy!”

The stranger stared into the fire as if remembering it from somewhere impossibly far away.

“I came from the islands,” he said suddenly.

“Ferry?” asked Johnny.

The man smiled faintly. “No. I walked the shore.”

“There’s a lot of water between Wirral and Orkney,” Johnny insisted.

“Aye. But St Andrew’s tide was risin’. And on nights like this, the old paths open. If you ken where tae put your feet.”

Enoch stopped wiping the bar.

“You’re lookin’ for someone?” he asked.

“Aye,” said the stranger. “The guardian of the crossing places.”

Johnny Boy puffed his chest and started, “Well…” Enoch didn’t even look at him.

“No,” he said simply. Johnny deflated like a dropped soufflé.

A sudden knock rattled the locked side door. Three slow knocks. Then a long scrape.

Everyone froze. Except the stranger.

“Best not answer that,” he said calmly. “It’s no friend of sea or saint.”

Johnny Boy stared at Enoch. Enoch stared back. Sab hid behind a bottle of rum.
Ty stood, muscles tight, the deep warning growl rumbling from his ribs.

Enoch muttered something unpleasant, marched behind the bar, opened the Button Box, and pressed the second red button. The pub shuddered, not violently, but like a stubborn horse stepping sideways.

The lights dimmed. The shadows thickened. The wind outside changed direction in a single second. And whatever had been knocking… was now knocking somewhere very far away.

The Angel exhaled. The Demon wiped his brow. Sab fainted theatrically.

Johnny Boy whispered, “Where… where are we?”

Enoch shrugged. “Little left. Little down. Could be Wales. Could be the gap between Wednesday and Thursday. Hard to say.”

The stranger stood, finished his whisky, and placed something on the bar.

A small driftwood cross, gnarled and weathered and warm to the touch.

“For the one who keeps the lights lit,” he said.

Enoch picked it up and felt it hum, not with danger, but with memory. Old sea-lament memory. Orkney memory. Something saintly threaded with storms.

“What’m I supposed to do with this?” he grumbled.

“Keep it safe,” said the man. “Only saints and fools walk the old roads. And soon enough, you’ll ken which you are.” He walked to the door, opened it, and stepped into the mist.

This time, the bell rang.

Johnny Boy stared after him.

“Enoch… what was that?” Enoch tucked the cross into his apron and sighed.

“Lad, I’ve run this pub a long time. And I’ve learned three truths.”

Johnny leaned in.

“One: The North always sends a messenger on St Andrew’s night.”
“Two: Never trust a man who doesn’t leave footprints.”

“And three”, Interjected Sab, “never let Enoch press the second red button again. My wings are inside-out.”

Ty curled back up by the hearth. The Angel poured himself another pint.
The Demon demanded a rematch.

The wind outside gentled as if nodding in approval. And Enoch’s Well settled, once more, into its strange, impossible peace.