by Scott Hale
“I couldn’t say, Mr. North.” He looked at me pleadingly, looked at the knife at my side nervously. “He came alone.”
I cocked my head at the priest who had once been so unwelcoming towards me. “I frighten you, Father.”
“Everything frightens me,” he said, starting up the steps. “If I had the strength, if I did not care for my flock, I would leave.”
“What did you see in the coffins?” I asked, nodding at the four against the wall. “You looked, and what you saw convinced you that you needed someone like myself to come here to put an end to all this.”
Father Clark continued up the steps, the torch throwing his shadow wildly across the room. “A newborn wrapped in red roots, sleeping in John Dark’s chest, suckling from the man’s slowly beating heart.”
Entry Eleven
Ghouls are decrepit creatures suspended in decay, segregated by shame. It’s not unheard of for a ghoul to shed its shape and take on the form of an animal. Grunt warned me of wolves in the woods, and now that I know that it has killed outside of the graveyard, it seems I’ve discovered its type and method of movement. If the ghoul is infected by this disease, of which I understand frustratingly little, then its behavior is expected to change as well.
Father Clark had seen a newborn cradled in bones, swathed in rot. Has the disease changed the ghoul? Has it given the creature a way by which to reproduce, to alleviate its insufferable loneliness?
I fucking hope not.
I hate ghouls, always have and always will. Seth and I have killed six ghouls between us, and each encounter has been disgustingly memorable. The smell of their bodies and the bodies they’ve consumed lingers in your mind for weeks after, and the ferocity with which they defend themselves almost always guarantees a scar or trip to the hospital. If one does not possess the means to exploit the creature’s weakness, then one will find themselves dismembering and disemboweling the ghoul until only a bloody, chunky pulp remains, for they are surprisingly resilient.
Fortunately for Seth and myself, we happened upon several daggers crafted from the bones of a saint, with red Death engravings carved permanently into their hilts and blades. One slash or stab from the weapon and the ghoul is finished, reduced to decomposed sludge. I don’t know how the process works exactly, but I can’t say that I’ve ever been disappointed with the results.
So glad, then, that I brought two daggers with me.
Entry Twelve
As I made my way to Doctor Frederickson’s residence, I began to understand how the killer was able to go undetected with such ease. No one was working, no one was socializing; the streets were empty, the windows curtained. No one was watching and no one was listening. I wondered if Eliza Warren’s death had been the death to break their resolve, for, just a few days ago, the entirety of Cairn was there to meet me at the gates.
No, I said to myself, a stranger has come to their town and made their struggles his own, and with their burden on my shoulders, they will rest, and breathe, and love what loved ones they have left to love. I could not blame them for it. In their position, I’d have done the same.
“I want to see Orphan Boy and Orphan Girl,” I said as the doctor let me into his house.
“What’s that?” the doctor asked, obviously having heard me. “Why’s that?”
“Father Clark showed me the four infected corpses in the church’s basement,” I told him. “A plant or root is responsible for the illness, right?”
“Yes, I believe so,” the doctor said, fidgeting.
“If you’ve found no evidence of it growing here, then it must’ve been brought on someone’s person. The children you could not identify may have been from Parish.”
Frederickson scooped up a cup and drained it down his throat. He coughed, and I smelled alcohol. “We looked them over already and found nothing.”
Give me a reason, madman, I thought to myself, touching the bone dagger hidden in my coat. “Well, it’s always good to double-check your work, isn’t that right, Doctor?”
Frederickson laid the two small coffins on the ground and placed the ribbons that marked them atop their lids. His eyes lingered on the boxes and then his brow furrowed. He brought his crowbar down on the first coffin and worked at its edges, motivated by what appeared to be anger and disappointment.
“What is it?” I asked
“Too light,” he wheezed, “they’re too light.”
The coffin lid splintered and cracked. Frederickson glanced at me, the coffin, and then turned his attention to the second box, red faced and speechless.
“Empty,” I mumbled, going to my knees for a better look. “Where is the body?”
“Son of a bitch!” the doctor yelled, prying open the second coffin, sending the lid across the room and under the stairs. “Both are gone. Someone—” Frederickson dropped the crowbar; his hands turned into fists, “—someone took them and sealed the coffins back up!”
You won’t be resurrecting them after all, I thought to myself. “Why would someone do that?”
Doctor Frederickson shook his head.
“You spend a lot of time down here, don’t you?”
The doctor, sweaty and heated, studied the crowbar.
“Otherwise they wouldn’t have made the effort to hide the theft.” I revealed the bone dagger and my intent to use it.
The doctor kicked the crowbar away. He dropped down onto the floor, ripped the ribbons from the coffins, curled them up, and shoved them into his pockets.
“I know you’ve been over each body a thousand times.” I took a step forward and put the tip of the dagger beneath his chin. “So tell me: were they infected?”
“Through and through,” he said, removing the ribbons, both of which were yellow, and smelling them, “through and through.”
Entry Thirteen
Something terrible has happened to me, and I will do terrible things because of it.
I was sitting at my desk, considering what I’d learned and preparing myself for what needed to be done last night, when three knocks rattled my door.
“Hello?” I called out, but no response followed. The ghoul of Cairn had demonstrated a disregard for tradition, so I brought the bone knife with me as I crossed the room.
“Who’s there?” I asked loudly, hoping that if it wasn’t Grunt, then he would hear my voice and come to my rescue.
“I said ‘who’s there?’” I repeated as I bent over, put my eye to one of the many holes in the wall, and peered out into the hallway.
Rain, I smelled rain, and a shape, I saw a shape just at the edge of the peephole—a small shape outside my room. I looked to my side and saw pale fingers like wriggling worms under the door. They moved up the space between the molding and the door, towards the lock, and began to pick away at the wall.
Tapping, I then heard a tapping at my window, and a shape, again I saw a shape, as it scurried over the glass onto the roof. I went to the desk and grabbed the second dagger and the remainder of the Black Fey. A hand slammed against the window, cracking, but not shattering it, and snapped away. I stumbled backward, onto the bed and, laying there, listened to the laughter that sounded in the dark.
“Thanks for stopping by,” I said, sitting up and getting to my feet. I grabbed several vials from the desk and pocketed them. I went to the door. “Makes finding you freaks a hell of a lot easier.”
The window blew out as I unlocked the door and kicked it open. The shape went down on all fours and crawled quickly to the first floor. I followed, because I knew if I stopped I would die. My feet pounded down the stairs as my heart pounded in my chest, with the second pursuer nipping at my heels. I shouted for help that I knew would never come and followed the fleeing shape into the secretive fabric of the night.
Cairn stretched out in all directions, a great and infinite sprawl of stone and darkness. I struggled to keep pace with the shape as it darted through alleys and streets, as it scampered through gardens and gates. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that my stalker
had vanished and that the town remained asleep.
The shape’s footprints and footfalls had all but gone when I reached the moonlit well. I fell against it, my lungs begging for oxygen, and took in the cold air. Had they meant to draw me out into the open? Were they not expecting that I would follow? I strained my ears for sounds of the shape’s breathing beyond the gathering fog. Was this part of the hunt? How many nights would I be doomed to partake in this chase until their amusement gave way to hunger?
I pushed away from the well, and as I started back towards the Lodge, I remembered Eliza Warren’s drawing: a small, circular stone house with many windows but no door and no neighbors. I leaned over the well, sending the bucket to its bottom, measuring its depth. A splash rose out of the gray mouth and then laughter.
This is where your imaginary friends live, I thought as I took the rope to which the bucket was still attached. You prettied it up the best that you could, Mary, but this is it. I tested the rope’s strength, wrapped it around my hands and ankles, and descended into the hardened throat.
The tips of my toes slid against the damp stones of the well. Fog spilled over from above and wrapped itself around me as I moved down the rope. Below, the void yawned and churned and spoke in the language of splashes and waves. Ignoring every impulse to do otherwise, I looked past my feet. A dizzying swell of fear rose through my body as the seemingly fathomless depths stared back. After shaking my head and cursing myself, I gripped the rope tighter than before and began my defeated ascent.
And then I stopped, stupidity surmounting common sense. In that brief moment, I had seen through the murk a ledge and a place where the wall had fallen away. I kicked off the stones as I slid downwards, and when I could, I threw myself onto the thin outcrop. Securing the rope around the jagged stones there, I entered the narrow breach.
The crevice was a claustrophobic’s nightmare. As I shimmied sideways, my nose skimmed against the sharp rocks and my eyes fluttered to keep the dirt away. I breathed shallowly, the cramped earthen corridor pressing hard into my chest and stomach. Blood trickled down my wrist from where the flesh had been slowly scraped away by the stones. My legs weakened as pressure built against my knees, preventing them from bending. I will die here, I thought, lodged in that suffocating place. In a hundred years, they will find my skeleton and wonder what I’d been so desperate to reach on the other side. My temples began to ache, as though drills were penetrating my skull, and it was then I knew I’d gone too far.
“No fair,” a spoiled voice cried out, “no fair!”
My eyes widened and drank the dark for light. A small, clammy hand shot through the split, grabbed my own, and ripped me out of Death’s grip. I fell into the hollow hard and fast, busting my lip and bashing my head.
“He got stuck,” the voice of a boy chirped. “But here he is!”
As I suckled the blood leaking from my lip, flames from nowhere burned into existence. The fire danced across the rim of a large bowl, then slithered towards the center, gnawing at the kindling there. The glow of hell spilled out of the vessel, washing over the bone-littered floor and the gore-caked walls. It rose to the ceiling where ghostly smoke gathered and shone on the hundred coffins that hung there, lids ripped free, corpses already eaten.
“Hello, sir,” a little boy in a tattered suit said, stepping into view.
“Hi,” a little girl in a sullied dress added, standing beside the boy.
The boy was no older than eight and the girl no older than ten, and they were both dead. Their skin was pale, wet, and wore all across it scars, cuts, and bruises beset by exposed muscle and protruding bones. Strange vermillion veins were threaded through their wounds, running from their ears and the corners of their eyes. Dried blood was painted on their arms up to their elbows and onto their mouths down to their collars. They were not ghouls, of that I could be sure.
“Introduce yourself,” a woman yet unseen whispered into the hollow.
The little girl curtseyed, strands of hair falling from her skull as she did so. “Ruth Ashcroft.”
The little boy bowed, the curve of his spine moving through a rip in his jacket. “Edmund Ashcroft.”
Ruth Ashcroft? Edmund Ashcroft? Orphan Boy and Orphan Girl. I wielded the bone dagger and they looked upon it unmoved. “‘R.E.,’” I quoted from Hodge’s Lodge’s register.
“They do like their games,” the woman spoke, her voice closing in from all directions. “Come closer.”
I obeyed, but only so that I would be near enough to drive the dagger into their little, dead hearts. “And you are?” I asked, the boy and girl stepping backwards away from me.
The shadows at the furthest end of the hollow writhed; bright red veins pushed forward in one cancerous mass that bore a coffin at its center. Inside, terrible eyes shone with a green virulence. A long, slender hand, and then another—they gripped and pushed the sides of the coffin, bringing the woman’s face into the light. She smiled, the flesh around her mouth ripping as she did so, and said smugly, “Amelia Ashcroft, of course.”
I’d heard enough. I rushed forward, blade outwards, then hit the floor, mouth to the woman’s toes, as her children swarmed me. A searing pain spread across my back as they opened it with their nails. Teeth clamped down on my shoulder and on my calf. They stepped on my arm and worked the bone dagger free from my hand. Edmund kicked my head, took it and beat it against the floor, while his sister slowly stabbed the dagger into my side, just barely breaking the skin.
“You will help us,” I heard Amelia say through the torture, “and I will help you. I’ll save you from what’s about to come.”
“Fuck you,” I said through my teeth, turning over and kicking Ruth in the stomach.
Edmund took me by the hair. His sister scampered over, handed him the dagger, and he drove it into my neck. A terrible agony unlike any I have ever known coursed through my body. I sputtered and spat blood all over the woman’s toes, the thick and sour taste of metal coating my throat.
“You will help us,” she repeated. “You do not have a choice.”
Amelia Ashcroft leaned forward in her coffin, her feet spreading apart. Vermillion veins slithered down her thighs, past her ankles, and onto the floor. I closed my eyes and I closed my mouth, but still they found a way in, and when I thought they could go no deeper, they went deeper still.
Entry Fourteen
Ruth and Edmund took my hands and led me through the underbelly of the graveyard. We emerged behind the church, outside the gates of Cairn, out of a hidden hole in a weeping willow. They kissed me on the cheek, giggled, and retreated back to their mother. I stood there for a moment, bloodied and beaten, gripping the wound which should’ve killed me. I had a new job now and no choice but to complete it.
Entry Fifteen
To Seth, for I’ve no one and no need for anyone else: forgive me. Forgive me for what I’ve done and will do. Forgive me for loving you and for writing it down for all to see. I will not die unless it is said, and I would die saying it a thousand times over.
Entry Sixteen
My clothes were stained and covered in glass from the vials that had broken during the attack. I crept into my room at Hodge’s Lodge, locked the door, and stripped naked. The damage done by Amelia’s children had already begun to heal, just as she said it would. Reaching my hand into my mouth, I felt the tip of a pulsating vein just beyond my molars.
“You will live a long and unnatural life,” the Ashcroft woman had promised, as she opened the gouge on my neck and pushed into it a necklace with a gray gem within a tangle of silver worms. “And you will do good work because of it.”
I scratched at my neck and tore at the scabs, ignoring the nauseating pain as I searched my flesh for the jewelry. Gone, not there, disappeared and now a part of me.
Grunt knocked on my door, asking if I was doing well and if I wanted something to drink. I ignored him, because I feared what I might to do him if I did not.
Father Clark came later with new revelations to reve
al. Several townsfolk arrived shortly thereafter, ready to be interviewed and have their stories heard. Now that it was unsafe for me to be around others, I had become very popular.
I ignored them, ignored them all, and kept on sharpening the bone dagger’s blade, preparing for the night’s work to come.
Entry Seventeen
Hrothgar Hodge seemed to be expecting me, so when I jammed the dagger into his side and twisted, he did not struggle. His blood ran hot and fast over my hands. I stabbed him some more for no reason in particular. When he went to speak, I severed his vocal cords so that I wouldn’t have to hear his cries. As the life left his body, the vein twitched in my throat and tightened in my chest with satisfaction.
“The disease did not take to that one,” Amelia Ashcroft had told me, pulling me into her rotted embrace. “It’s a learning process. He’s a liability.”
I dragged Hrothgar Hodge’s death-laden corpse into his room and dropped it through the floor where the boards had been lifted away. Ruth and Edmund looked up at me, mouths wet with salivation; they crawled up and over the man’s body, sank their claws into his flesh, and pulled him away, disappearing into the hole that ran under the building.
When I was sure that I was alone and no one would hear me, I wept into my hands, smearing Hodge’s blood all over my face, like war paint.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I repeated, shaking where I stood.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I couldn’t stop, the words becoming a chant, becoming a form of penance.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I continued, falling to the floor, sitting in his crimson pool. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Entry Eighteen
Tried to kill myself today. Bled all over the place. Got close once. Cut through all the veins and arteries in my arm. Pulled them out, too. Didn’t stop there. Kept going until I saw the bone, then broke it for good measure. The vermillion vein splintered and spread and fixed the damage I’d done. Have to get it out to get out. I hear her calling. She’s got a new name.