by Matt Drabble
“Story?”
“Aye, in my opinion the legend and the truth often get tangled over time. You ask Casper and he will tell you of a noble family that ploughed their way west looking for a brighter future. A righteous brood that found fertile woodland and built a town. Saviours to man, the whole damn family, but the truth is never quite so poetic I’ve found.” Darnell paused and took another long drag from his flask. “You can never tell anyone what I’m telling you.” His face suddenly looked older and sadder as the worry lines deepened.
“What is this fear that Casper seems to hold over everyone here?” Michael asked as he leant forward.
Darnell smiled at his eager face. “Don’t get excited, Mr. Writer; there’s nothing supernatural about the man. He’s just an egotistical prick, and nobody works on a town contract without his say-so. If he knew that I was talking to you about his family, then I would be out of work like that.” He clicked his fingers for emphasis. “He also frowns upon…” he waggled the homebrew flask, “Libations of a personal nature, shall we say.”
Michael relaxed, disappointed and relieved in equal measures. “So what about the woods, then?”
“Ah, now therein lies a rather spookier tale altogether,” Darnell continued, the strong alcohol greasing the gears. “The Christians founded their own town alright, but it wasn’t the workers’ paradise that Casper would have you believe. The conditions were appalling; dozens of good men died both building, and working in, the mill and many more through illness as the Christians refused to pay for a doctor. Casper’s family grew fat and wealthy off of the backs of the workers. Casper’s distant relative, Tolan Christian, was a religious tyrant of the Old Testament persuasion, a real fire and brimstoner. From what I’ve heard of the rumours back when I was a boy, before Casper took an iron fist hold over the town, Tolan Christian was nothing short of a monster. It is even said that…” He looked around the small kitchen and then rose and pushed the window curtains aside to check the yard, “…he would carry a wicked sharp axe that he would use at random on the workers whenever he heard God's voice. Eventually, it’s said that towards the end, it wasn’t God's voice that he began hearing.”
“How the hell would he get away with that?” Michael asked incredulously.
Darnell snorted bitterly. “This town was a speck on the landscape. Hundreds of miles from anywhere, the Christians ran the town, and Tolan ran the Christians. There was no law here, other than the one that he laid down.” Darnell sat down wearily. “Before they all died out, some of the other old-timers around town would tell stories about how Tolan grew more and more disturbed, more and more fanatical. He closed the church in town and began holding services out deep in the woods. The town priest soon disappeared, and Tolan conducted the ceremonies himself. Soon he had recruited several of the largest workers in town to his cause, their job being to keep the others in line. Punishments were swift and brutal, and the town lived in fear. It’s said that he literally crucified men in the woods when he’d adjudged them to have angered his God by their blasphemous ways.”
“Jesus,” Michael sighed.
“Not exactly,” Darnell smiled back, humourlessly.
“How the hell is Eden still here today?”
“Therein lays the mystery, my young friend,” Darnell slurred. “For some reason, there is a very small gap between the madness and the prosperity, and it’s a mystery that I’d wager Casper and no other descendant would want opened.”
“That’d make one a hell of an addition to my book,” Michael mused.
“WHAT?” Darnell roared. His arm swept the beer bottles off of the table and several shattered on the floor. “You can never write about what I’ve told you,” he said, his tone suddenly dropping from anger to pleading. “You can never open up those wounds, he’d never let you.” He reached out and took Michael’s arm gently. “You’ve got a beautiful wife and home and a baby on the way.”
“How did you know about the baby?”
Darnell shrugged the question away, “You’ll prosper here, Michael; you people always do. Live your life and be happy. What more is there? Just be happy and leave old ghosts alone. Oh, and stay away from the Woodland Festival; it’s not for you this year.”
----------
Michael stood outside in the sunlight again; his imagination was already running wild with thoughts of mad zealots and haunting, and his research brain was ticking over fast.
Should he really seek to uncover the dark secrets of Eden? He had spent his life writing tales such as this, but here was a real mystery. His intellect salivated at the thought: a book based in a reality stranger than any fiction that he had created in the past. But this was also his home now. Not just his, but Emily’s, and soon to be their baby’s as well.
Emily had been horrified by his idea to write a fictitious account using Eden as inspiration.
He shuddered to think just how she would react to him raking over the graves of the actual town. Real history, real deaths, and real horrors, perpetrated by ancestors of the current manager.
Casper had obviously worked hard to bury the past beyond the sight of the living; the residents were growing younger and younger as the next generation moved in, and the stories faded with time.
He pedalled slowly out of the yard and headed back towards town. His head was low, and his mind was crammed full of too many thoughts.
As he cycled absently, his brain absorbed and processed. He did not see the car parked in the bushes as he passed. Whilst Michael wobbled his way attentively back towards home, the car pulled out carefully and drove towards Darnell’s yard.
The car pulled up softly outside the workshop, and the driver hefted his bulk out into the day and flexed his stiff knee as he put his considerable weight on it. The man closed the door behind him, and the sticker on the door gleamed brightly in the dazzling sun. The decorative badge simply read ‘Sheriff’.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Interlude: A Brief Town History Part Two
Tolan Christian grew up broad and powerful, both in stature and physique. He was nineteen years old and could already hold sway over a crowd full of eager faces that were turned towards his sermons.
His mother, Chastity, was by now in a full embrace of her name, ever since the night that she had slain the demon inside her husband - the demon that had monstrously abused her innocent child.
After that night, she had retreated into the shell of herself, and she became more and more strident about her religious views.
She had always been a woman of faith, but now she was in the vice like grip of a spiritual mania. Tolan was raised within the confines of his mother’s psychosis.
They were bound together with chains of isolation, and they limped across the countryside relying on the kindness of others.
They sought shelter in various churches and sects as they passed, seeking food and warmth against the cruelty of the outside world.
Chastity had determined that they were touched by God’s hand; a finger of fate had been laid upon them and had set their mission in progress.
She only knew that God had a plan for them; she was not blessed with the specifics and did not ask during their nightly conversations.
God had spoken to her on the first night of their fleeing as she and her son lay inside a neighbouring village barn.
They had huddled against the cold and the knowledge of her barbarous act. It was only a self serving delusion, as she could not face the truth over her son’s defilement or her violent retribution.
God had spoken to her and told her of his plans for them both. They were to head north and wait for his sign. He would show them the way - but only after they had first proved their worthiness. She was to take no provisions, no food, no money, no baggage, only the shirts on their backs and God’s bible. Only then could they begin the long walk to his promised word.
Their days were arduous and tiring. They walked until their feet blistered, bled, and blistered again, until the skin eventually harden
ed like leather.
They passed towns and villages, people and animals. Some greeted them with friendship, some viewed them with suspicion, and others with hostility.
Chastity knew that they walked under the protection of God, that their path would be cleared, and they would only face the challenges that he saw fit.
For five long years, they had traversed the country, relying on God’s plan to show them the way.
Every night, without fail, she would read from the Bible, bathing her son under the showering sermons.
Under her preaching, God became a vision of power and retribution. He evolved and mutated into an omnipotent being of rage and fury. His love and compassion became lost to the growing Tolan.
During their five year marathon, Tolan would often deliver services to the towns and villages.
He was angelic at first, a child who captivated audiences with his grace and charm. Later, as he grew and aged, he became a more vociferous and charismatic preacher.
He was a powerful young man who carried God’s word to the masses, and thrilled the young women of his congregations. Chastity succumbed to the sin of pride as she watched her son delivering powerful sermons in barns and fields.
Amidst the mud and filth, he rose above to be the voice of God. For five long years, they toured the country on foot, never deigning to take a horse or carriage. Theirs was a painful wandering on foot and empty stomachs, and they suffered as they must, and waited to be shown the sign.
Eventually, after the harshest of winters, Chastity watched as Tolan stealthily tracked a rabbit through the undergrowth, and they came across a clearing surrounded by thick and lush woodlands.
The sun shone brightly and warmly on their upturned faces despite the season, and there was a fresh water stream that ran through the clearing.
The earth looked rich and fertile and the forest teemed with bountiful and edible wildlife. Chastity knew that this was God’s plan for them, and they were finally home. This was to be their future, their world, their Eden.
Chastity was still only thirty eight years old, but her body was eons older. The physical exertions had taken an irreparable toll on her fragile frame, and her mind was even more damaged. Since the night when she’d spliced her husband’s head in two after discovering her son’s abuse, her psyche had shattered, unable to deal with the guilt over Tolan’s desecration and her own murder committal.
Now all she heard or acknowledged was the word of God that ran through her thoughts and dreams, both waking and asleep.
After they had fashioned a rudimentary shelter, she had sent Tolan out to find converts to their cause. This would be a holy, sacred place that would require brothers and sisters to build a monument to the heavens.
Tolan was thirteen years old at this point. He was a handsome young man, blessed with his mother’s looks, and his father’s build. He turned heads amongst the girls, but had little interest in their bashful stares and doe eyes.
Tolan’s mind, much like his mother’s, seemed to only exist from the dawn after the death of his father and he remembered practically nothing from that day spent in the woods.
Only brief glimpses of humiliation and pain existed in the deepest of his dark dreams. Only some mornings when he woke, in those blurred lines between waking and asleep, did he suspect.
His mother’s will had been iron and absolute for over five years, but her unstable mind had leaked into his, poisoning his thoughts and stunting his emotional growth.
He believed in the unconditional word and plan of God’s will as relayed to him by his mother, and he preached the fire and brimstone of a dark and vengeful deity.
His sermons were powerful and passionate. His audience were swayed by the booming voice that emanated from the chest of a child; his natural charm radiated outwards and over the assembled.
He possessed a fluid, magnetic charisma that drew people towards him. Villagers gravitated to him, desperate to be closer, and they hung on his every word and gesture.
Many of the towns and villages were in desperate straits; crops were failing, farms were collapsing, and sickness was prevalent in both townsfolk and livestock.
The people were fraught with worry and despair; they looked to the heavens for answers and were met only by silence and abandonment. In their fear, they turned to a thirteen year old preacher, a child of God sent to deliver both his word and their salvation.
----------
Chastity waited patiently for seven months for Tolan to return.
She grew weak, despite the warm air and bountiful lakes that God had provided for her. Her right leg grew lame, and she had to fashion a crutch from a tree branch in order to hobble around.
She sharpened the end of the crutch to a point, and used it to spear fish from the stream. She prayed all day and spoke to God in long conversations after dark when God showed her his vision for the town.
God’s influence was now drifting from her mind and thoughts. Instead, his voice became a whisper in the trees, and the branches would rustle beneath the soft breeze as his voice sank into her.
The voice showed her where the church would sit, where the mill would lay. It showed her the town square and the beautiful children that would run and play under the hot sun; it told her of Eden and all of its glory.
When Tolan returned, he found his mother near death; she lay peacefully upon the lush grassland, her face burned by the sun, but a contented smile etched across her features.
The large open field was crisscrossed with drawings that she had made by dragging the pointed end of her crutch through the earth. The rough sketches were a plan for the town, a layout of buildings and areas. All were labelled clearly and plainly for him to follow.
He had brought thirty three men, women and children with him. These were his disciples, the first of many brought by a hope of a new life.
They had followed him as he had moved from town to town and village to village, collecting the lost and despondent. He’d accepted all before him and turned no one away from the cause. He simply accepted it as God’s plan that builders and farmers were among his party, another sign that God had now blessed him to carry on beyond his mother’s tender fragile frame.
His mother passed away gently the first night that he returned. He had held her now almost emaciated body; her face was gaunt but happy, and she smiled at him and whispered her love before she died.
Tolan buried her beneath the field where she had drawn her plans for the town.
He had heard the voice in the rustle of the trees for the first time that night; it was the same voice that had spoken to his mother. Whilst his new disciples had slept, he’d opened the throat of an orphaned girl that he had selected for such purpose.
The girl was not with any of the party that he had brought in and would not be missed. He’d shed her blood to bless Eden under the eyes of God, and she would not be the last.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The bright lights twinkled and the Ferris wheel rumbled. Squeals of children’s delight and wonder lit the warm summer evening’s air, and joy radiated throughout the town.
The carnival had arrived and taken over the square. Booths sparkled with vibrant colours and fairy lights hung low and danced amidst the night sky.
There were antique looking attractions that glistened with gold trimmings. There was a carousel, bumper cars, a chair-o-planes ride, and an old-fashioned ghost house.
There were games of chance such as balloon and dart games, air rifle ducks, duck pond, ping pong fish bowl, basketball hoops, and baseball bottles.
The mouth-watering aromas rose like tangible clouds from the food stands. Delectable fried fragrances and cotton candy tickled taste buds attracted the none too healthy appetites.
The D’Amour Carnival had been operating for almost a hundred years. Preston D’Amour was the company’s present chief operating officer and his family had founded and run the business ever since its inception.
He was the incumbent charged with the runn
ing of the carnival; his was an iron fist forged in a thousand battles, in a sea of vipers who only understood discipline.
Preston took a slug of neat vodka from a chipped Spiderman glass tumbler that he grabbed from his bedside table.
The trailer was large and spacious on the inside despite its antiquated exterior. Image was everything in his industry, and the crowds did not look kindly on luxurious Winnebagoes rolling into their towns. The carnival was old, but immaculately maintained; the antique wagons glistened with care and the rides sparkled with love and attention.
His was a travelling show of memories and longed-for childhoods, and his job was to bring an old, outdated demonstration of a better, happier time.
They passed through many communities that had struggled in the present economic climate. Jobs were scarce and hope scarcer. They offered an evening away from worries and a brief hiatus from reality.
Eden, however, was different; this was the one town where Preston felt like they were the ones taken back in time.
This was a town isolated from the problems of the world. It was a community that bucked the trends and existed in its own isolation; the D’Amour Carnival was the intrusion of the modern world here.
Eden was a lot further off the beaten track than Preston would have ever liked to normally travel, but the money that the town council offered more than made up for the inconvenience.
The carnival planned its route every year to end in Eden, as after they played this town, they would split and retire for the winter. They always made five or six times their usual rate here, even without rigging the games or running scams. Casper Christian, the town manager, was always adamant about them running a clean ship here.
Preston shuddered and took another long, hard swallow; the neat alcohol exploded in his chest and warmed around the icy edges of his fear.
Casper was a strange and scary man. Despite his own formidable size and character, Preston always looked to avoid any situation that would place them alone together. Casper’s rules were sacrosanct: no scams, no rip-offs, and no fraternizing out of hours.