by Ross Turner
Startled, her gaze fell immediately upon the only person who seemed not to give Marcii such a wide berth as everybody else.
“Oh my life!” She exclaimed, dodging to one side even as she turned so that she did not collide with the young girl.
“I’m sorry.” The girl replied. Her voice was sweet and her tone rose in apology, but her expression remained unchanged, as if only her voice registered her surprise.
“Vixen!” Marcii followed. “I didn’t see you there! Are you okay?”
“Fine, thank you.” Vixen replied, gazing up at her friend Marcii through her tawny brown eyes.
Vixen was an orphan whom Marcii had befriended, quite some years ago now. Marcii could only guess at her age, perhaps somewhere between eight and ten. She was perpetually filthy and spoke only slightly less infrequently than she ate, making her a scrawny, unseemly child.
Her hair was permanently matted with twigs and leaves and, in fact, Marcii had only ever assumed she was an orphan because she seemed to have no home or parents, and had never spoken of either.
Passers-by didn’t just avoid the immediate vicinity around Marcii now, but cast looks full of disdain upon the two of them as they scuttled past. To those with wealth and power, such a friendship was meaningless.
The pair of them were considered worthless.
Nothing.
Lower than the very dirt itself upon which they walked in fact, beneath their cobblestone streets.
“Do you need anything?” Marcii asked Vixen then, fully prepared to go against all her strict instructions if the young girl needed to eat.
Marcii had always thought very fondly of Vixen and felt a strange attachment to the young girl that she simply could not describe. She thought for some reason Vixen was most special, even if nobody else did.
Her family were especially disapproving of her showing the girl such kindness, as they often made quite clear.
Vixen was harmless though.
She was just young and lonely.
Growing up without a family is hard.
Her offer hung in the air between them for some time, but Vixen did not reply.
Instead, she turned to her left slightly, gazing briefly between the flurries on people, and eventually raised her hand and pointed through the crowds.
Marcii followed her indication and somehow her gaze wound its way perfectly round and through the swarming masses to land immediately upon what Vixen could see.
She was pointing at a doddery old man who clutched tightly to his cane and stooped back against a wall on the very edge of the square.
His name was Midnight.
Confused, Marcii glanced back to Vixen, but the young girl was gone.
Just as swiftly as she had appeared, she had vanished, and she left Marcii feeling somewhat bewildered in her wake.
Sighing and furrowing her brow slightly with concern, Marcii turned her gaze back to Midnight across the square, just about visible through the teeming throngs. He had not moved on and looked deep in thought as he stood there, his deep, black eyes lost.
Marcii tilted her head slightly to one side and looked on at Midnight for a minute or two, as he flitted in and out of view between the crowds.
She had always found him to be a most curious old man.
He had simply appeared one day in Newmarket, a long time ago.
No one knew where from.
Or so the story went.
He was deaf and dumb and older than time itself. His face was heavily lined and his eyes deeply set from the long, gruelling century that had seemingly carved itself into the very leather of his skin.
He was a small, scrawny man, though he had strong, powerful hands, which Marcii always found most bizarre for some reason. His hair was grey and scruffy, he wore a beard and his eyebrows were thick like age old woolly caterpillars.
Of course, his name was not really Midnight. The townsfolk had only taken to calling him that because every night he made his way religiously outside to stare at the moon in the midnight sky.
Even when it was raining and the sky was shrouded by thick cloud, where not even the faintest glow of the moon could escape the blanket of blackness, still outside he would go, and nobody knew or understood why.
His black suit and tie were rumpled, as were his trousers and shirt. His black, leather shoes, though perhaps once upon a time smart, were now scuffed and scratched from probably many years of wear, Marcii imagined.
The old man did not see her looking at him through the crowds, but as he moved, pushing slowly away from the wall and taking small, careful steps, leaning heavily on his cane, Marcii still thought he looked as though something was bothering him.
He glanced around frequently, yearningly, as if he was looking for someone. It was as if something very pressing was weighing down upon his mind, and it would not yield.
Still, he did not see her.
A few more moments passed by and a group of four or five ladies passed between Marcii and Midnight, blocking her view of him for a few precious seconds.
And then, after a moment or two, once the line of sight between them had cleared, Marcii looked back to where she’d just seen him.
But her eyes did not find him.
He was gone.
Nowhere to be found.
Suddenly a loud bell rang out across the town, resonating obnoxiously from somewhere across the square, and the swelling crowds seemed to be instantly drawn to it like rats.
Surging forward, sweeping her up along with them, the crowd seemed to swallow Marcii whole. She was not tall enough to see over anybody, and so had no idea what was going on.
Nonetheless, no matter how hard she shoved and fought to break free, it seemed that the berth she’d been granted all morning was long forgotten.
She found herself caught up helplessly, pushed and dragged roughly along within the brimming throngs, unable to escape.
Chapter Three
The young Dougherty heard him before she could see him, for she was still trapped within the surging crowd.
To her left stood a grotesquely fat man, sweating and greasy: breathing heavily both from the effort of walking and from the excitement of the bell still ringing. His shirt was tucked into his trousers but his belly was so massive that it looked simply as if he’d folded the bottom of his shirt beneath the giant rubber ring of fat that surrounded his existence.
And to her right, laughing merrily with unnerving delight, a juxtaposed woman so thin and fragile that she looked like she might snap in the rush jumped and hopped madly to get a better view.
It seemed Newmarket was going insane.
Marcii caught snatches of conversation from somewhere behind her.
“It’s him…” A woman whispered frantically.
“He’s here every day…” A man replied in a much deeper, gruffer voice.
Marcii craned her neck to look but she could not see whom the voices belonged to.
“Do you believe him?” The woman asked. Her voice was shaky and filled with fear. But the man she was talking to did not get time to answer.
Suddenly his voice sounded again, this time booming even louder than before, silencing the whisperings all around. His words echoed about the enormous square and carried over the throngs of onlookers, reaching their eager ears, awaiting with such impatient trepidation.
The very first opportunity she found, though it most certainly did not come soon enough, Marcii seized the chance to dart through a gap that revealed itself behind the enormously overweight man to her left. She practically dove through the narrow crevice, and not a moment too soon. It closed immediately again behind her as she dodged and ducked and escaped thankfully out the back of the hustling crowd.
Eventually, stepping back across the square and away from the teeming masses, Marcii was in a position clear enough to see what all the commotion was about.
What she saw did not surprise her, and she couldn’t help but taste disgust on her tongue.
There was one man
stood above the rest, surrounded and engulfed within his own delusions of grandeur.
As there always seems to be.
He dripped in expensive clothes and jewellery of only the finest quality. His suit and shirt were made from silk that was smooth to look at, let alone touch. Several heavy looking gold rings adorned his fleshy fingers and thick loops of plated gold hung cripplingly about his shoulders, all meeting in the centre of his chest.
However, lavish as his taste might have been, Marcii could never have imagined anybody would be able to wear such expensive garments so badly.
How wrong she had been.
Mayor Tyran certainly managed to pull of that most undesirable feat with relative ease.
Probably in his mid-forties Marcii guessed, his dark brown hair was greasy to the point of being slimy, and pressed flat to the top of his round head. His dark, deep set, sunken eyes that seemed perpetually troubled peered out from narrows slits between his cheeks and his overbearing eyebrows.
Whilst his rotund pot belly protruded quite obviously beneath his shirt and pulled the material tight across the buttons at the front of his jacket, his arms and legs were scrawny and weak, making him appear bizarrely disproportionate.
His whole demeanour looked most troubled, as if he had the weight of the world bearing down upon him. But the longing expression on his face added menace as he seemed almost to accept that willingly, as if he welcomed it: like he was hungry for it.
Tyran had only recently been elected into power. Or, perhaps more accurately, he had bought his way in.
Nonetheless, in only that very short space of time, the impact he’d had was profound. The people of Newmarket flocked from every corner of the town to hear him speak.
“My people!” His voice boomed across the square again, captivating his audience, and Marcii shuddered slightly at the sound.
She found him utterly repulsive.
She just couldn’t understand why people were drawn to him so.
He came from the south, supposedly.
The rumours were that he’d made his fortune in slavery, buying and selling the poor and homeless and making vast profits in the process.
It mattered not though. Whether people believed the talk or not, once he’d paid them off, the rumours always stopped, or at the very least they ceased to matter.
“I’m sure by now how many of you have heard of last night’s tragedy!” Tyran began, opening his arms expansively.
Marcii frowned for a moment.
She had not, in fact, and for once was actually strangely drawn to Tyran’s words, as they lured her in.
“In the depths of the night, under cover of darkness, two of our own were taken from us!” He continued dramatically. “Thomas and Marianne Hatchet were murdered in the night! All of their cattle, and even their dog, were also found slaughtered!”
Gasps and cries of terror rang out from Mayor Tyran’s onlookers, for whilst some of them had heard, clearly it was too early for the news to have reached everybody.
Shock and fear rippled through the crowd like a disease, spreading from person to person in less than an instant.
Just the way Tyran liked it.
“And if we do not find those responsible for this horror…” He pressed on, seizing his advantage. “If we do not find them and stop them…” He breathed loudly. “Then this will be just the beginning!”
“Who was it!?” A stray, distressed voice called from the crowd. “Are we safe!?”
Cries of demanding agreement followed, spawning something of a shouting match for a few moments, instigated by fear.
Tyran smiled slyly, allowing the dread to fester a moment or two longer before intervening.
Eventually he raised his hands and quelled the noise. His subjects obeyed and quieted their pleas.
“I have brought these trusty men you see before you into my service…” He offered assuredly, indicating with open hands towards a dozen or so burly and menacing individuals. They stepped obediently forward and displayed themselves silently to the crowd, ominous and looming.
Each seemed bigger and heftier and more of a mountain than the last. Just as Tyran dripped in finery, his men were coated in armour that looked too heavy for Marcii to even stand up in. Their weapons were varied and numerous, but always deadly. The scars that they bore across their arms and legs and faces ran deep and long forgotten, as if they were nothing more than proof of their prowess.
They were, to all extents and purposes, mercenaries.
And Marcii knew it.
Fierce and brutal, they were loyal only to the coin placed in their hands.
And such, as is the way of the world, that made them loyal to Tyran.
“My police are sworn to protect you…” He went on, as his crowd took in the foreboding sight of the men stood before them. “Whatever it is that seems to think it can plague us, it shall have to think again!”
And with those words, though there were only a handful of voices to begin with, the cheering began, and soon enough the rest of Newmarket followed suit, for Tyran was not only to be their Mayor, but indeed also their saviour.
As his people whooped and applauded he basked in their false affection and smiled with dark intent out across the sea of faces before him.
For a moment his gaze seemed to settle and fix quite intentionally upon Marcii in the distance. His eyes bore into her fiercely from where he stood, raised up above everybody else, and his police stood about him protectively, menacingly, stifling even the tiniest hint of a threat to his presence.
Unable to hold his gaze a moment longer, feeling suddenly sick to her stomach, Marcii broke his hold and retreated.
She couldn’t stand to listen to another second, for although he had drawn her in, and it seemed he had indeed hooked the rest of the town, she was not swayed so easily by his enticing words.
Only a few gazes followed her as she dipped out of the square, away from the cheering and the applause.
One of them, even still, was Mayor Tyran’s.
But the other two, unseemly though they might have been, belonged to none other than Midnight, the doddery old man, and to Vixen, the young orphan with twigs in her hair, rips in her clothes, and dirt across her expressionless face.
Chapter Four
As Marcii wandered home, head down against the cold wind that had spurred into motion, she pulled her heavy jacket, laden with the fruits of her expedition, more tightly around her neck, and thought on Tyran’s shallow words.
Though she may have disliked him, were his intentions genuine when he hired those mercenaries?
Was he just trying to protect the people of Newmarket?
Or was there something else afoot?
She didn’t know.
She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to.
Tall, thin houses that heavily contrasted the vibrant markets filled the town and rose up about the young Dougherty as she walked. Looming on either side of the narrow, cobblestoned street along which she scurried, the grey buildings hovered with a grim and uninviting air all about them.
Lodged between houses here and there at irregular intervals as she passed them Marcii stole wary glances down dark, dank alleyways that wound between the heavy set, thick stone structures.
They were cold, dark, often damp, and smelled of all things putrid and disgusting: if not rats and vermin, then instead faeces and urine.
Shuddering slightly, her pace quickened.
Soon, approaching a relatively square, squat building, set at the very end of a row of small, terraced houses, Marcii finally looked up at the slightly mouldy wooden door in her path.
She was home.
Reaching out and grasping the cold, black ring of iron that was the stiff door handle, she forced the door inwards and, with a loud, creaking groan, it reluctantly complied.
Cold air rushed in behind her and she shut the door quickly so as to keep as much heat in as possible.
Inside, the house was dark and the single room that made
up the entirety of downstairs was plain and poor. Only a rickety wooden table and four chairs sat in its centre, and the all but vacant space was lighted mainly by candles.
Admittedly a little light filtered in through the two windows set in the one wall, on Marcii’s left hand side: the greatest benefit of being at the end of the row of terraces. But the thin glass in them was filthy enough to leave a decidedly gloomy feel hanging in the air, and as the young Dougherty looked upon the place which she knew only as home, her mother glanced up at her from her seat at the table with a peevish look in her eyes.
“What took you so long?” Came her irritable greeting, her tone accusing and disapproving.
“Mayor Tyran was speaking in the square…” Marcii replied by way of explanation.
Her mother just huffed and sniffed rather loudly.
Amanda Dougherty, though she was of course Marcii’s mother, and the young girl loved her dearly, more often than not upset her youngest daughter’s calm with just the simplest of mannerisms, or most minor of comments, for she did not think before she acted or spoke.
Or, if she did, she didn’t care.
Amanda was thirty-nine years of age, with thin, unhealthy looking blonde hair and blue eyes that were more than a little grim. She was tall for a woman, taller than Marcii, and had been attractive, to a certain degree, when she was younger.
But now, as she’d grown older, she looked gaunt and, quite frankly, unappealing.
Aside from all of that, needless to say, she looked nothing like her youngest daughter.
Marcii sighed inaudibly, wisely keeping her thoughts to herself, and began to unload the fruits of her efforts upon the table under her mother’s scrutinising gaze.
Thankfully though, before her mother had a chance to comment, thudding footsteps began their slow descent down the aged wooden staircase over towards the back of the room.
The stairs always seemed to shake and wobble whenever anybody made their way up or down them, even though they were supposedly secured to the stone wall of the house.