by Scott Hale
“What happened?” I asked, trying, and failing, to suppress my interest.
The man shrugged and stepped outside, and as he pushed the door shut, he said quietly, “They’re all gone.”
Entry Three
I never saw the man in the brown trench coat again. Like all curious characters that pass through our lives and stir things up, he disappeared as soon as his presence became appreciated. I expect I embarrassed him, and his embarrassment made of him a hermit in his cramped compartment somewhere on the ship. But there was no denying that his story had resonated with me, that it had stirred my indifference from its slumber by lighting the bed afire.
So I scoured the ship for those who looked or sounded as though they were on their way home to England.
“I’m sorry,” a posh old woman said, her small head poking out of the massive dress she wore. “I do not know of the family or of the place,” she added, the tea cup on her lap rattling on its saucer.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked, crossing my legs and doing my best to look sophisticated. I could feel years of perfectly honed passive-aggressiveness oozing out of her royal pores. “You seem like an affluent woman. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of the Ashcrofts.”
The old woman’s eyes darkened, like she’d suddenly become possessed by some demonic entity (she hadn’t, trust me; I would’ve known). “I am Judith Myers,” she said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
I shifted in my seat, raised my coffee in a toast, and said with a smile, “It means about as much to me as Ashcroft means to you.”
“The Ashcrofts,” she began with a tremble in her voice, “were a very old family. There’s nothing to be said on the matter.” Judith cleared her throat, set down her tea. With all of her strength, the crone pushed herself out of the seat. “They’re gone, taken by the same disease that took Parish.”
“What of Cairn?” I asked.
She started to hobble away, her left leg having dozed off at some point during our conversation.
“What of it? It’s an unremarkable village.”
“I don’t know,” I said, standing up. “I find it rather remarkable that every few days someone dies there and nothing is done about it.”
Judith Myers laughed and turned away. “How is that any different from the rest of the world?”
I let Judith leave under the impression that she’d bested me in our dialogue. There was no doubt in my mind that she was an educated woman, but even the most intelligent in this world can be ignorant to those unseen forces of nightmare and shadow.
I’ve yet to decide if I envy those who believe horror’s form to be confined to the atrocities committed by man. Mine and Seth’s lives would be simpler, yes, but would they be better? And what of those who, by our efforts, were saved? When they were backed into a corner, blood pouring from their wounds, sanity pouring from their minds, who would have intervened if we had not?
Entry Four
We’ve arrived in England, or so I’m told. A thick fog clings to London and seems to have no intention of letting go. The rain is relentless, making of the city a bloated corpse that has escaped the ocean’s undertow. In the swirling mist, the silhouettes of buildings float and sway and appear as though they belong to another world entirely. Down the streets and across the roadways, black figures shamble in and out of pockets of light, carrying in their wallets hope and in their hearts defeat. The street lights do their best to burn through the haze, but like those who live here, their lives are short and their efforts trivial.
By carriage I will cross this country to the fated village of Cairn, a small settlement of six hundred in the northernmost region of Blackwood Moor. By moonlight I will stalk the alleys and open windows and put my ear to cracked doorways, and discern for myself the nature of the crimes said to have been committed. According to Seth, and I apologize to you, my readers, for only now disclosing this information, Cairn has endured thirty deaths in ninety days in this cruel year of 1889. The bodies of men, women, and children have been found dismembered and desecrated, eaten away at and put on garish display in the cemetery. Two men by the names of John Gallows and Richard Dark were initially arrested and charged with the crimes by the local constabulary, but they were quickly acquitted when the deaths did not stop. How Seth had learned of these events, I do not know, and what role this Ashcroft estate plays in the mystery is beyond me as well.
I am but one man, and one man is no match for conspiracy; therefore, I will do what I do best: find the culprit, beat them until they are bloody and raw, and be on my way.
Entry Five
The inn at which I stayed in London smelled of refuse and debauchery, so when my driver finally arrived, I nearly blew the doors off the place trying to escape it. The driver was a large man with a wild beard and head full of curly black hair. His hands were massive, perfect for crushing skulls, and his face scarred, probably from trying to crush skulls.
“Grunt,” he grunted, “that’s what they call me.”
I opened the carriage door myself, because I could tell the man had no intention of moving from his perch, and threw my baggage inside.
“What should I call you?” I strolled up beside the driver and placed my hand on the steed whose reins he held.
“Grunt is fine,” he said, a grin emerging from the black jungle that had grown out of his face. “We’re going to Cairn, are we?”
“Yes, we are,” I said, pulling my hand away from the horse as it looked back in annoyance.
“You’re from America?” He turned his head towards a child that was pointing in his direction from afar, laughing at him.
“If you’d like,” I said, leaning into the man and nodding at the child, “I’ll hold him down while you go to work on him. He shouldn’t put up much of a fight.”
Grunt made a sound that must’ve been a laugh and said, “Get inside before the rain starts again.”
Given my previous arrangements, I couldn’t complain about the cramped confines of the carriage. It was warm, and except for Grunt, whom I had taken a liking to, secluded as well. I slept for most of our trip though the city, waking only as we passed the abattoir. The air was thick around the massive complex, as though the blood from processing had coagulated on the wind. At the front of it, the workers in their white shirts and gray aprons milled about, grazing on gossip while they waited for the din of the killing bell.
“All that goes in,” Grunt said through the window between us, looking at the abattoir, “does not come out as it was.”
When I awoke to a new day, I found the ghostly structures of London had vanished; cement and cobblestones were replaced by endless fields of grass and gently rolling hills. Small streams had become rivers overnight, the water spilling from their banks and flooding the roadway. Farmhouses rose out of the folds of the land, their battered crops ripped from their husks and vines and left to roll about in muddy puddles and ditches.
We passed several carriages on the highway, each carting the privileged to their hidden homes far from the poor populace off which they prospered. Occasionally, we would come across groups of people moving on foot, belongings slung over their shoulders or the backs of the beasts they would inevitably slaughter for sustenance.
“Where are they going?” I asked Grunt, knocking on the window behind him.
“Why don’t you stick your head out there and ask them?” he retorted.
I considered his suggestion, but out of fear we may be run off the road and killed, I decided against it. “What do you know about the Ashcroft estate?”
“I thought I was taking you to Cairn.” Grunt looked over his shoulder, the sky behind him ablaze with the morning sun. “The Ashcroft family died out years ago, and most of their properties and investments were bought up.” Grunt sneezed into his hand. “I have a brother who used to pass through Parish when he was a trader; said the only Ashcroft still alive was Amon, and nobody saw him unless he willed it.”
I rummaged through my bags for a
hunk of hardened bread and sank my teeth into it. “I heard Parish is empty now, its people vanished without a trace,” I said, crumb and saliva leaping from my mouth.
“You heard wrong, like the lot of them,” Grunt said. He clicked his tongue to hasten the horse. “A disease came to Parish and its people fled. I’ve seen them with my own eyes in the city.” He shut the window through which we had been speaking and said, “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear in these parts.”
I shoved another piece of bread into my mouth and directed my attention outside, where a man in a ragged suit was picking the threads from his collar on the side of the road. He was covered in mud, and straw clung to his clothes. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought him a scarecrow that had abandoned its post.
“He’s from Parish,” Grunt said, opening the window, letting the biting wind into my compartment. “Like I said, they’re all headed for the city.”
I made eye contact with the man as we passed and felt as though I had looked straight through him, for there was no life in his eyes. He continued to work at the tears in his suit, his movements rigid and awkward, like he was learning to use his limbs for the very first time.
“I’ve been to Cairn, you know,” Grunt revealed later, the white vapors of his breath dispersing into the black night.
Half-asleep and wholly exhausted, I opened my mouth to call the man a son of a bitch for withholding this information, but what came out was more akin to a death rattle.
“Night comes early in Cairn,” the driver continued, his voice an eerie reminder of the countryside silence, “and with it the wolves. Until your partner contacted me, I thought it were those beasts responsible for all the deaths.”
I sat up in my seat and wiped the sleep from my eyes, the conversation having developed the potential to take an interesting turn. “What did my partner tell you?”
“Nothing,” Grunt said, turning his head towards the sound of something splashing in a nearby pond, “but someone doesn’t come from America all the way to Blackwood Marsh for the sights.”
“Who do you think I am, Grunt?”
I pressed my face to the window beside me, fogging the glass with my breath, and felt an intense dread at the impenetrable darkness that surrounded us. It seemed as though we were no longer of this world, and the path which we followed was one reserved for the lost and the damned.
“I know you didn’t cross the ocean to hunt wolves,” Grunt said. He shushed the horse as it started to whine and jerk from the carriage. “That’s what I thought it was when I first heard of the deaths in Cairn.” He paused for a moment to swat a gnat. “Also, I know you should watch Father Clark and watch him close. For someone who lives in the church, on the edge of the graveyard, he is doing a piss poor job catching the killer when it comes time for them to deposit the bodies.”
“More importantly,” I said, leaning forward, “who are you? Seth didn’t need to hire a specific driver to get me out here.”
“My brother and I are from Cairn,” Grunt said. “Our family left when the Ashcrofts found Parish to be more profitable.” He looked over his shoulder to enjoy with me my moment of clarity. “My brother went back to see how the village had fared over the years, and when he told me what he saw, we knew who to ask. Your partner’s name was mentioned many times.” Grunt scratched his beard and pulled a twig from its depths. “Don’t let that go to your head, though. You two are hardly popular.”
“So it seems,” I said, now wishing I had stayed in London for a few more days to learn the extent of our influence and infamy. “What did your brother see when he went to Cairn?”
“Rows of flesh,” Grunt said, his voice a whisper, “and that which walks behind the graves.”
Entry Six
I could tell by the crowd that had gathered at the gates of Cairn that my arrival was not unexpected. Thirty men, women, and children were waiting in the muddy streets and on the muddy walls, watching as the carriage passed into their seldom seen domain. Grunt paid them no mind as we went down the central road, in and out of the long shadows of the structures that fell across it.
“Tell me: in what state did you leave your humble little village?” I said softly.
Grunt turned his head slightly and said, “You’re in good company, Mr. North. The only man you’ve to look out for is Benjamin Boyce.”
I sunk down in my seat, avoiding the penetrating eyes of a gaunt grandmother on the street. “Why’s that?” I lifted myself up slightly and saw that the grandmother had vanished, a tornado of dead leaves where she had once been.
“I took his little brother out hunting once,” Grunt said, nodding at someone out of my sight, “and the wolves saw that he did not come back. It comforts Benjamin knowing he has someone to blame.”
As we pressed further into Cairn, I began to see a place that had been robbed of its potential. Squinting and wiping the fog from the carriage window, I saw the skeleton of a sawmill in the distance, left to die amongst the very trees it had taken. Through the alleys, I caught glimpses of farmhouses with fields too large to tend. Over Grunt’s shoulder, I spied amongst the gray hills the mouths of sealed caves, the allure of the treasure they held muted.
“The Ashcrofts came and made promises, and what they built up, they let fall down,” Grunt said, turning the carriage onto another street.
“How long ago was this?” I asked. The distinct form of a church began to push through the fog ahead.
“About ten years,” the driver said before grunting at the horse to slow its pace. “About the time Amon accepted inheritance of the estate,” he added, looking back at me, as though he doubted I’d be able to make the connection.
I drummed my fingers on my knee. “Let me see if I understand this, Grunt: the Ashcrofts, with all their entrepreneurial prowess, ventured to this part of Blackwood Marsh to make of this village a profitable place. They realized, for whatever reason, they were mistaken, and instead set their sights on Parish. Ten years pass, and this Amon fellow is given the reins and at some point sells off the family’s claims. Parish is forgotten, and while it is forgotten, a disease sweeps through and sends its citizens for the city. How am I doing so far?”
“Fairly well,” Grunt said as we circled a surprisingly modest fountain outside the church. “What about Cairn and the murders? You left that part out, sir.”
“Yes, what of Cairn?” I said, my agitation growing as I realized the bearded bastard was intending to stop at the church. “Thirty deaths in ninety days and all I seem to hear and think about is Ashcroft. Why is that?”
“Ask Father Clark,” Grunt said. He stood up and dismounted from his perch, the whole of the carriage sighing in relief from the loss of his weight. “He’s the one said to have seen Amon a week before the killings began.”
Now thoroughly enraged, I sprung out of the box I’d called home these last few days and hobbled over to the large man, who was patting the horse on the head and whispering sweetly into the beast’s ear. I reached for his collar to strike him, then all of a sudden I had a vision of Grunt crushing my skull with his massive hands.
“Why,” I said, brushing a bit of hair off his collar instead and smiling, “why did you not tell me this earlier?”
Grunt looked at my hand like he was considering feeding it to his horse. As I retreated, he said, “I told your partner. I assumed he would fill you in on the details.”
Unlike Grunt, I don’t assume when it comes to Seth, for I know from experience that my friend has a predilection for withholding information. Though it pains me to admit it, I am partly responsible for this, because I find that I work more efficiently when I’m not burdened by vagaries and bias. Make no mistake, I am a heretic through and through, but I’ve often entertained the possibility that I was once a dog in a previous life, blindly obeying his master because of the comfort in doing so.
Note to self: Do not allow Seth to read this entry, otherwise his head will swell to encephalitic levels. The last thing I want i
s that fool to think himself my retainer.
“Grunt,” I said, rocking back and forth on my heels, “I’ve a confession to make. I’m terribly afraid of churches.”
“Tell it to Father Clark.”
Grunt led me to the low, run-down wall that surrounded the church, and together we passed through a gate whose lock had long since broken away.
“Start here and then sleep.”
“I think you have your priorities confused,” I said, secretly thankful for the driver’s guidance. “Will you be…?”
I intended to ask Grunt if he would wait for me while I interviewed Cairn’s priest, but found that the words were lost to me, for my eyes had set upon the graveyard lurking behind the weathered church. It was fairly large given the size of the village, and would grow larger still once the recently murdered were laid to rest. There did not appear to be any particular order in which the headstones were placed, so the plots were scattered about haphazardly. The ground itself was uneven, overturned; thick roots twisted out of the soil, tired of the taste of decay. Weeds and lichen covered most of the markers, the only source of color in Death’s dreary realm.
At the furthest end of the cemetery, a crypt sat shrouded under the branches of a weeping willow, quietly watching over the yard for the restless dead. Immediately, I knew I had to open its doors and descend into its depths, for there was no doubt in my mind that entry into that building was forbidden, and where do horrors come from if not forbidden places?
Interview One
Father Clark was a sinewy man whose diet likely consisted of host, wine, and holy water. He held a battered bible in his right hand and a long strand of yellow ribbon in his left. He looked tired, and the dried lines of blood on his wrist and cuff told me he’d spent the better part of the night engaged in murder or self-flagellation. Unlike his parishioners, Father Clark was not eager to greet me, which was expected, because the last time Seth and I were welcomed warmly by a priest, he had tried to let his deformed daughter burrow into our chests.
