William Meikle writes heroic horror. That’s not to say good people always win in his stories or even survive to their end. When facing monsters and demons and other “bogles” beyond our ken, his heroes and heroines have their own magic. It’s often not grimoires or special weapons or superscience or sorcery that defeat the horror. It’s the magic of duty, love, and loyalty.

Ramskull is such a story.

The opening is that of a classic police thriller. Here it’s veteran David Wilkes and rookie John Campbell. Wilkes spent his early cop days on the mean streets of Glasgow, but now he’s on the force in Oban, Scotland where the two are sent to investigate a mutilated sheep on the nearby island of Leita.

Actually, that’s not the real beginning of the story. It’s set in 1494 and also on Leita where Alexander Seton – member of a clan that shows up in many Meikle stories – is sent by the king to make sure work resumes on constructing the Abbey of St. Brennan there. What he finds beneath the Abbey will, of course, tie in with what Wilkes and Campbell find more than 500 years later.

And what Wilkes and Campbell will find is an island ominously quiet, a pool of disappearing blood, and that some of the inhabitants and a group of visiting tourists have been possessed by something that’s turned them into cannibals. But, despite the danger they pose, Wilkes is a decent man who, unlike many a zombie story (which this isn’t), isn’t going to willynilly kill his old friends and acquaintances. Not that he has a lot in the way of weapons. And the cavalry isn’t going to be coming anytime soon given that communication with Oban has been cut off.

The novel pulled me through the story relentlessly even when I did notice bits of other Meikle stories turning up, and the third act took me completely by surprise. Besides a bit of Lovecraft, Meikle works in his Just One mythology in explaining just what force has been awakened on Leita. ( )