by Aaron French
I began to blubber. My body’s functions were beyond my control. My pants soaked with warmth and filled with something soft. I stood there too afraid to run, even for my life, when something snapped me out of it.
That thing emerged from the tunnel. Its spear-shaped head poked out and sniffed the air. As it crawled, it spread its arms to stretch out long leathery wings and then it was crawling faster, unrestricted.
I ran, terror-stricken, looking for my etching. My flashlight shined on countless, crude renditions of my mark all over the den, from floor to ceiling, and I screamed unabashedly. From the darkness above came a collective hissing and more rain. By some miracle I found the etching, my etching, and sprinted faster than ever. Behind me, I heard it gaining.
I ran up the stairs and screamed again, but the hole was in sight.
I won’t reach it.
I leaped like a cornered cricket a number of times, but it was beyond my reach by inches.
I’m too late.
Darren’s call was desperate. This was no joke. I scrambled up to the tomb and ran down the small hill. “Darren,” I called. “Darren!”
I worked the lock at the entrance and emerged into the night.
I heard a ruckus from back inside the tomb, screams that sounded human or like they had once been. The terror, the agony—what was happening? I flinched so hard the lockpicking tools fell from my hands.
Then a monstrous grating of stone came from inside, one so powerful petals from the cherry blossoms fell like a dusting of snow in the blackness. His voice screamed out and was slowly closed off as if a granite hand had covered his mouth.
A moment later it all ended in silence.
My phone buzzed. I checked it. It was from Darren.
The text read com insid its ok
It repeated until the letters became archaic symbols filling the screen line after line. I dropped my phone, and it went black. Alone in absolute darkness but for the light-colored cherry blossoms, I left everything and ran, ran for my life not knowing why, but only that I must.
About the author: L. E. Badillo is an aspiring short story writer living in Illinois.
The Devil's Kneading Trough
Sean T. Page
“If you are going shooting, then Gertrude and I are going out for a walk,” concluded the slim blonde in the green plaid ensemble.
“The ground’s too wet darling,” came a deep authoritative voice from the scullery. “Cook’s making us a pot of tea. Do you fancy a cup?”
“Tea, tea, endless rounds of dreary tea,” muttered Alice to herself. She was utterly bored of life in the country and they’d only been down on the estate for a fortnight – would the pheasant shooting season never end so they could return to the city?
Alice Webster, daughter of noted Yorkshire industrialist Reginald Webster, had married well in title but not in fortune as is ever the case when one marries into a great landed family of England. However, with her father’s gilt-edged support, the current Lady Crundale, as Alice was now known, had substantially re-furbished her husband Rupert’s crumbling ancestral country home in the southern corner of the country. Still, life as a member of the local gentry had proved far more pedestrian than even Alice’s best friend Gertrude had warned.
“Tell Lord Crundale we’re going out for a walk, Peggy,” asserted Alice to one of the maids. Gertrude rushed down the sweeping central staircase in a striking green coat she’d picked up from Harrods. The deep virulent colour only made Alice realise just how much she missed London and how far out of touch she was with the latest fashions – she could have sworn that green was more last season.
“We’re going up to the Devil’s Kneading Trough,” called Alice as she and Gertrude escaped through the heavy dark wood front door. “Might see you at the top.”
Lord Rupert Crundale hollered something but the girls were already through the great Doric columned porch and making their way across the well-manicured Italianate lawns.
There are several geological formations in the South of England referred to by locals as the Devil’s Kneading Trough and this particular feature lay on the cusp of the North Downs in the garden-county of Kent. Created over a hundred thousand years ago by the gushing ice water of a melting glacier, it is as if a giant had taken a handful of white chalky earth out of the side of the rolling grass-covered hills, leaving in its place a deep-sided, dramatic valley. Sure enough, this odd feature became a focus for all manner of local lore, from whispers that it was the accursed site of a witches’ coven to rumours of night-time hauntings by ghostly and vaporous apparitions.
Alice walked briskly across the top of the Devil’s Kneading Trough, with the less anxious Gertrude awkwardly in tow. Most of the land in view from this high vantage point was part of the Crundale Estate, all the cultivated land to the church-less village of Brook.
“Oh do come on, Gerty. You’re such a frightful indoorsie,” she chided to her childhood friend. Echoing from just across the dirt track and from a small copse of trees, both ladies could hear the steady blast of cartridge as Rupert searched for his shooting form in preparation for the start of the hunting season proper. Alice had never really understood her husband’s obsession with the shotgun; he had a collection of nigh on twenty pieces in the gunroom back at the manor house. Still, it seemed to amuse him and occasionally she delighted in the bounty of wild hare his hunting produced.
As Alice picked some of the yellow wild flowers covering the hill, Gertrude walked slightly ahead and peered over the steep sides of the gulley, enjoying the thrill as one would a daring Margate fairground ride.
“It’s quite a drop, Alice,” she exclaimed. Alice joined her on the edge as further shots shattered the smooth music of a warm summer breeze.
“It’s so peaceful,” Gertrude continued. “I could never understand why you’re so anxious to get back to London – not when you’ve got all of this.” She glanced out across the countryside towards the small market town of Ashford with its buttressed Church tower and striking iron spire.
“Because my darling friend,” she answered. “The pitiful boredom of this god-forsaken place will likely send me to Bedlam. It’s so very dull,” she sighed.
But Gertrude had lost interest and was watching the broad entrance to the gulley below where she could see a small party of locals dragging what looked to be a rough brown sack towards the base of the trough.
“What is it, Gerty?” queried Alice.
“I’m really not sure. Some men seem to be pulling a dirty blanket or something.” Gertrude’s eyesight was far superior to her friend’s and she could soon make out several of the figures.
“I do believe that’s Mr Williamson from the estate and young Perkins too.” She paused for an instant and then continued. “Yes, it’s certainly them and some other men from the estate, I think.”
“Rupert will be damnably angry if they’re shirking again. I’m sure he said they had work in the old orchard until autumn.”
Suddenly Gertrude’s whole visage changed – gone were her fresh rosy cheeks – to be replaced by an ashen-grey, panicky face.
“What is it?” she asked again, seeing her troubled expression.
“Oh how beastly.” She turned away with her head in her hands. “It’s a live animal in that sack. I think it’s a goat and they’re beating it, Alice, thrashing the poor creature to death.”
The cries of the young billy goat soon reached the girls as the men battered and pounded the trapped animal with blunt wooden panels. Each man stood solemnly, emitting a low guttural chant as they took it in turns to batter the helpless creature.
“I’ve had enough of this,” asserted Alice, in her best Mayfair tone, and set off down the steep side.
“Stop that, you men!” she cried at them. “Stop it I say! I am Lady Crundale and I demand you stop right now. I’ve never seen such behaviour. You’re like savages.”
Alice reached the bottom of the hill and approached the small crowd which now milled around aimlessly, t
he sack soaked in the red blood of the shattered beast. Each man quickly removed his cap and stepped away from the crimson-soaked sack but none would meet the eye of the enraged Lady Crundale. Hundreds of years of servitude and indenture rendered each incapable of opposing her.
“Would someone like to tell me what in the heavens you men are doing here?”
“We don’t mean no harm now, Lady Crundale,” answered one of the eldest in the group. “It’s always what’s we do ma’am. It’s only a sickly goat. His Lordship lets us keep our ways, my lady.”
“Well not anymore,” she cried. “Get back to your duties. I shan’t see men idling.”
They looked amongst themselves, as if weighing up whether to continue or obey the young mistress. The sour-faced men soon dispersed and Alice returned to the house with a shaken Gertrude to await Rupert’s return from the hunt.
***
That evening as the three sat sipping some of the fine elderberry wine from the estate, Alice broached the subject of the incident up at the Devil’s Kneading Trough. A poor day’s hunting had left Rupert in a foul mood and so up to this point, the girls had not mentioned the business. However the young Lord Crundale soon brushed aside their worries and seemed little concerned with the curious and barbaric practice the ladies had witnessed firsthand.
“You must understand, ladies, this isn’t London society. The people here cling to the old ways – it’s likely just some fertility rite of some sort. I let them do as they will if it keeps them quiet. Dash it all if the blighters aren’t always burning, pickling or drowning something – that’s country life. It’s been like that for hundreds of years in these parts.”
Rupert would hear no more of it and strategically withdrew to the smoking room for one of his rare Cubans, but Alice was unsatisfied by the leanness of his response. Despite being quite used to playing second fiddle to her somewhat over-powering husband, she decided to make a stand on this point and so, after several awkward and stunted conversations over coffee and the following day’s breakfast, the young lady finally got her way. It is often said a long marriage is based on a good husband maintaining his lustre of control as his wise wife steadily influences him for the better, and Alice was best-pleased with the outcome, chalking it as her first minor victory since they had arrived in the country.
As part of their ceasefire agreement, that very afternoon Lord Crundale met with his farm manager, Mr Henry Williamson, and several of the senior hands. The new edict banning any heathen practices went down badly, with worried faces around the room, but they could see that the master would not change his mind.
“I’m sorry but that’s the final word on the subject, gentlemen,” he concluded. “I shan’t have such cruel practices on the estate; it has greatly upset my wife and our visitor. Now, let that be the end of the matter.”
The sulking men filed out grumbling as loudly as they dare. Mr Williamson paused at the door and hesitated as if about to speak, but seeing the red face of the blustering Lord Crundale he docked his cap quietly and left.
The men spoke at length in The Queen’s Head that evening of Lord Crundale’s ban. It wasn’t the first time and providing it only lasted a month or so, no harm should come. They would wait patiently, as men without fortune have always done, for the minds of those in power and position to re-cast the future as was oft the case. Certainly the ban wouldn’t last, they gossiped. It was just to please the young mistress.
***
By the end of 1929, the dire financial crisis into which the city of London and indeed the entire world had collapsed began to affect even the Crundale Estate. Alice’s father still ran two of his Bradford factories but rampant protectionism abroad had denied him the lucrative South American and European markets. For sure, he could no longer afford to bankroll his cash-hungry son-in-law as he furnished his lavish ancestral pile in the far south of the country. Several houses on the edge of the estate were sold at rock-bottom prices to rich exiled Russians for whom Lord Crundale cared little.
Lord Crundale and his manager, Mr Williamson, concentrated on the still commercially-viable business of farming the fertile estate, for it is well-known in England that one can drop a stone pebble in the Kentish soil and it will yield a crop at harvest time. However, the harvest of 1929 had been a poor one and provided precious little in capital for either new seed stock or much needed machinery.
The following two seasons were much the same, with wheat, potato and barley harvests, each failing, the latter succumbing to a rare fungal blight which saw the entire crop rot on the proud still-standing stalks. The small dairy herd fared little better. No calves were born between 1929 and 1930 and the weak heifers born the following season were sickly and lame.
By the end of 1933, the estate was slipping back into a condition of dilapidation, with all works on the restoration of the western wing halted through lack of funds and the invoices of stonemasons and craftsmen piling up in Lord Crundale’s office. With the cessation of payments from his wealthy father-in-law, the steady spring of Webster cash finally ran dry and all improvements were stopped so the pervading rot and damp once more commenced its steady advance into the mansion’s delicate plasterwork and walls.
However, it was not all dark clouds on the Crundale family, for in March 1929, Alice gave birth to a fine and healthy young heir for the estate, and he was named Albert after the first Lord of Crundale. With his telltale bright red hair of Alice’s family, his cries lightened the dank, depressed atmosphere of the empty house. To an extent, the stringent economic times served to create more of a family than had ever been in the house. Rupert cared less for London and its gambling joints now that his financial muscle had been thinned and so spent more of his time in Crundale. As for Alice, young Albert became the centre of her world and she forgot those heady days of city-life and high fashion.
But the uncontaminated bliss of the mansion could not last, and soon even its crumbling walls could not prevent the pervading gloom of crop failure and depression from seeping into the lives of Alice and Rupert. Lord Crundale spent hours in his study, at first with his farm manager, both hunched over sheets of paper and invoices and then, after the services of Mr Williamson had been released, alone, for long nights in the dim-light of his oak-panelled office.
The strain of the outside world finally spilt over one hot summer day, when Alice heard the sound of shouting coming from the front porch. She left Albert with Peggy and rushed through the scullery, into the main hallway. She was greeted at the door by her husband as he was slamming it.
“What was that, Rupert?” she asked.
“Nothing darling,” he said, looking bothered. For a moment, and caught in the bright sunlight of the window, Alice first noticed the flecks of silver-grey in his light corn-coloured hair. The strain of running the estate in such dire times was beginning to take its toll on the young Lord.
“It’s those goddam old women from the village again,” he cursed.
Alice looked shocked at his coarse language; maybe they really had been too long from the company of polite society. Rupert noticed he may have over-stepped the mark.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he explained. “You see they have been coming here rather regularly, every full moon in fact. You wouldn’t believe what it’s all about.”
Seeing Peggy carrying Albert through from his late morning nap, they decided to take tea in the glass orangery, where the sun streamed through the panels onto Alice’s fine collection of flourishing tropical plants and flowers.
“So what’s it all about, darling?” she asked as they sat down on the Indian wicker chairs. “Is it all about the layoffs?”
“I wish it were, Alice. I really wish it were.” Rupert looked vexed, as if trying to grasp the words to explain some complex scientific calculation. In truth, as with all Englishmen, he would have found a discussion around accounts or figures far easier to digest and review than this damned business.
“You see I grew up here, well, at least every summer,” he
explained. “And, these rural folks, well, they still cling to the old ways. It’s just the way they are...”
“Don’t they like the new harvester?” interrupted Alice, referring to the recent purchase on credit of a new American threshing machine.
“No, it’s not that.” He hesitated. “Do you remember that day at the Devil’s Kneading Trough when you and Gertrude stopped the men beating that confounded goat to death?”
“Oh yes of course I do, ghastly business. We can’t have that on the estate. I simply won’t have it done to those poor creatures.”
“Those crones I was speaking to are like the village elders around these parts, and since we have banned these practices or ‘daling’ as they call it, I have had one quack after another pleading, begging and cajoling, even threatening me to allow them to practice it again.”
“But why do they do it at all? Can’t the vicar of St Margaret’s put a stop to it? Blasted heathen practices in this day and age. I can’t believe it and these being Christian folks as well.”
“It’s not that simple, darling. On the surface, these folks are all faithful church go-ers and it’s all out for Sunday, but underneath that grubby veneer the old ways of the country still prevail.”
As Peggy dropped off the silver tray with freshly-brewed English breakfast tea and a selection of the cook’s savoury pastries, Rupert explained in some detail the bizarre subjects of his discussions. The daling which had been stopped was an important ritual to the country folk of the area, and in particular to the workers of the Crundale estate. No one could remember when it began, but it was certainly before the great grey stones of St Margaret were laid over the sunken runic stones that once occupied that hallowed site.
One man’s flippant regard for legend is often counter-balanced in the world of the strange by another’s fierce belief in its truth, and such was the case with the daling of the animals at the base of the Devil’s Kneading Trough. Although scarcely spoken of, and even then in hushed and guarded tones, the villagers believed that thousands of seasons before, a great entity known only as Hengst had fallen like Lucifer from the heavens. But this was no demon or angel. Its body had long-since disintegrated, this sullen spirit-creature now dwelt inside the dusty chalk slopes of the trough, with power far beyond the capacity of man. The locals sacrificed animals to this twisted demi-god in exchange for its enriching of the lime soil and their harvests. For only one period in the last few hundred years had an animal not been daled at the foot of the gulley and that was followed by the lean Puritan years of the 1660s, when many locals spoke angrily of how cruelly the great Hengst could take away what it had given.
