Sean McNulty (2026) Excavatum.

Sean McNulty’s Excavatum has been described at the haunted twin of The Odyssey but without the $250 million budget. Half of which was spent on marketing. Indeed, the cover for Excavatum, A Northern Folk Story, 1953 looks like a child’s drawing of a fishing boat, with three faceless dark figures and at the pointy bit of the boat, beyond the cabin, another faceless figure looking out to whiteness of the borders and the blue surrounds. Some might believe that McNulty did the drawing himself which would be just like him. I’m a fan of his work but more of the literal than artistic. Many of his stories, including these ones have appeared on ABCtales.

Excavatum, is as you probably know, derives from Latin, meaning hollowed out, dug out, or sunken titty. Yes, the sunken titty that belongs to Katrine, who along with her stepfather, Walter, are trying to locate a free-floating island near the Faroes, but probably further away, in which they mean to bury her mother and his partner.

J.M.Barrie before his global success with Neverland, wrote a short story nobody could remember the name of and more successful play based on the ghostly truth of a Hebridean island that appears and disappears.

You need to have faith to find such an island. And here we have it. Three priests on a mission—to Greenland as it happens—sent away from that bastion of religion and land of the potato, priest and nun, Ireland, 1953.

Father Masterson, ‘the wolf’ has no great belief in religion, but does believe in grabbing what he can when he can get it. The Catholic Church’s collar gives him a chance to loot and pillage. But he’s in disgrace. Caught with his fingers in another woman’s pie and being too handy with a measuring stick, whipping boys in his care to distraction.

Father Stinson, the boy of the trio, even though at 28, he’s not a boy, but unlike the wolf, he’s barely aware he has a penis, yet he does like titties (although it takes another kind of wolf to shake that truth out of him).  

Father Gessel is the senior of the missionary priests, a careerist who keeps a journal of how boring he is, which is always a good career choice, especially in the ultra-conservative Catholic Church.

Captain Littlewood is master of the sea. Master of the trawler they sail on. Named after his dead mum, with the surname coming from a Hollywood comedy duo that made their mark with slapstick that was never funny, but people laughed because they’d paid their 2d into the cinema and they didn’t want to cheat themselves.

Littlewood’s fiancée has dumped him and run away with a bloke from the Garda. Littlewood hit the bottle before that happened which showed some kind of foresight, which came in handy when dealing with three priests, a beautiful Danish woman with one tit, and an occultist prone to fly off into the ether before breakfast

All of which are meant to bring bad luck to seafaring men. End of the war in Korea. The Long March. The short haul. Griffins. Bach and giant sunflowers that sway to the musical beat. All in a day’s work. Excavatum, indeed. Read on.