by J L Aarne
I have heard the most dreadful tales since our arrival. Tales told almost entirely in whispers. These are stories that the colonists dare not speak above a whisper. It is assumed that their attempted abandonment of the colony was due entirely to impending starvation and the hostilities of Indians. It is true, they were starving, but we have brought with us provisions and there are plans to begin farming once again. Still, the people who survived the winter whisper about leaving for fear of the monsters. Creatures, they say, who were once men, but no more. They do not expect me to believe their stories, but I do. How could I not with the things I have seen?
In truth, however, I have never seen a creature of the night who could honestly claim human origins. I have seen those who look like men, but it is a disguise, they were not born human. Even so, there are many stories of such beasts, it seems there must be some truth in them.
Mr. Richard Warwick, a vanguard who traveled with us, scoffs at these whispered tales. I have tried to convince him to listen if he cannot yet believe, but I am afraid he does not hold me in very high regard. Perhaps it is because I am a carpenter and not a soldier like himself, but I wonder too if that should matter. Mr. Warwick does not seem to hold many of his fellow men in high regard. There are a few others like myself who came on this voyage and I have met them and call them friends, but while they respect Mr. Warwick—and fear him a little, I suspect—I have yet to hear anyone declare that they enjoy his company. He is a most disagreeable fellow.
July 25, 1610
One of the ladies who made the journey from England is called Verity Ainsworth. She is like me and a very strong woman, unlike any other I have met. She expects to teach school, but there currently are not enough children for a school and the boys who are old enough are put to work. She and I have struck up a friendship due to our shared interest in the mysterious happenings at the colony.
It seems that during the recent winter more than eighty out of every hundred people died and those starving wretches we returned to the fort are all that remain. A young man who survived, name of Jacob Carey, told me in strictest confidence and with great shame that they had survived for a while by consuming the flesh of the dead. Only later they came to realize that the cannibalism causing a change in them. Some of them stopped, determining to starve rather than forsake their humanity, but most did not possess such fortitude and succumbed to their hunger. Mr. Carey confessed to me that such men who are now counted among the dead because they are missing have not in fact died but been transformed into ravenous creatures that the Indians call wendigo.
I would like to tell the others this information—Miss Ainsworth would find it quite fascinating, I am sure—but I fear that I would not be believed. It also seems that I have a duty to keep Mr. Cary’s secret as I gave him my word I would not speak of it. Yet, my duty to my fellow man is stronger and if the threat of these monstrous beings becomes too great, I feel I must speak of it, if only to others like myself so that they might take action. The defense of the colonists against the creatures of darkness is why many of them made the journey. There were rumors back home about the little lost colony of Roanoke. This land is strange and new and, while beautiful, crawling with undiscovered terrors I can only imagine. The only way to defend these people is to know what we are defending them against.
I may confide in Miss Ainsworth and ask her opinion on the matter before breaking my word to Mr. Carey. It seems a serious matter to accuse a man of cannibalism, I would not like to do it lightly. Perhaps Mr. Carey is not as sane as I have been led to believe and these wendigo are no more than nightmares fueled by fear of the savages outside our walls.
Is it cowardly if I hope this to be the truth?
July 30, 1610
Awakened in the night by awful visions. I know not how to explain it even on paper minutes after waking. A great wyrm stirring in the dark abyss of the earth whispered to me. It seems the language it used was not English, nor any other language I am familiar with, but it demanded to be released as though I—I personally—held it prisoner. Perhaps it is the devil inside me wanting its freedom. I, who try always to be a respectable person, face the same temptations as any man. It cannot be anything but a dream and I find myself becoming calm as I write this, so I suppose I will be brave and return to bed after all.
August 14, 1610
When first we arrived at the settlement, I hesitated to call it a town owing to the sad state we discovered it in. It was a ghost town, sad, without hope, and empty. The people who had been living in it were survivors, not pilgrims. The fort palisades were torn down, the gates were hanging off their hinges, food stores were down to nothing but corn dust and chaff. Today, it resembles a town and if I have had some hand in this I could not be more proud to say so. There was a glass shop when we arrived, but it had been neglected for a long while. Now it is repaired and functioning again. Miss Ainsworth has convinced the people to allow the children who are younger than age thirteen to attend school twice a week. This is due, I believe, more to the returned health and vigor of the able-bodied men than to Miss Ainsworth’s skills of persuasion, but I shall not ever say so aloud.
As for myself, the more houses are built the more they require furniture and I have been kept so busy constructing both that I have taken on an apprentice. He is a boy of fifteen called Edward Elbert and he has talent, I am glad to say. He is quick to learn, and I enjoy his company. Sadly, young Mr. Elbert’s parents are both dead, his mother when he was a child and his father during the awful winter past. Miss Ainsworth has told me she believes that it is a mix of curse and blessing; I am thought to be rather odd by some folk and there is a good chance that they would not have approved his apprenticeship. She said this only once and quickly apologized. I must have looked strangely at her for the comment. It is a sad thing to see as a blessing, whatever the cause.
Without parents to keep him, young Mr. Elbert has been living in my shop. There is a bed in the back and it is quite comfortable. He is a sweet young man and not inclined toward speaking falsely, but he does not see at night as I do, so I have some doubt about the story he told me yesterday. I put it down here because I find it rings with compelling truth.
Two nights past, Mr. Elbert was readying himself for bed when there was a knock at the door. He thought it to be a late-night caller coming to make an order, which has happened on occasion as there are those of us who prefer the after-twilight hours. Instead of a customer on the doorstep, he found two children waiting for him. One, a girl, was older, perhaps twelve, and the other a boy of around five or six years. They were perfectly ordinary, even attractive children, save for their eyes, which were black as polished onyx. They asked to be let inside and were very insistent. Mr. Elbert says that he came close to welcoming them in, but something warned him against it. He tells me that he had a feeling and not only because of their unnatural eyes. Some instinct warned him of danger and he told them to go away and barred the door.
He was still shaken as he told me the story, so no matter how much I might like to disregard it as the night terrors of a young man barely out of childhood, I cannot. I have also heard of such black-eyed creatures before, though never encountered them myself. The stories are not widely circulated among common folk, so how would my young apprentice know to fabricate such an elaborate lie? No. Loathe though I am to believe it, I find that I do, and I am afraid.
The time has come to speak about all of these bizarre things. I am no soldier or warrior, Mr. Warwick is all too right about that, but he is and there are others. As the vanguard, it is his sworn duty to listen and believe me, even if he does not wish to. I pray his vanity does not block his ears from what I say. I fear much may be at stake here in this wild land. So much more than what we have prepared for.
August 17,1610
Mr. Warwick has gone hunting with a group of nine men, so I must wait to speak with him. I am not comfortable discussing it with anyone until I have spoken to him. He is to return in a fortnight. I know it is thought to b
e a regular hunt for food and skins, but Mr. Warwick took three men of our kind with him, which makes me wonder if food might be a secondary goal of the party.
I am plagued by dreams of the wyrm nearly every night now. I had one last night. I see scales that go on forever and a great slit eye watching me. I still feel it watching me when I wake for many minutes. It is a cold regard, devoid of emotion or desire. I might wonder what it wanted if I could fathom the mind of such a monster, but I cannot. It is a thing outside my understanding.
I have seen the children with the black eyes myself. They come most often at night, knock at the door and ask to be let inside. I say no, and they ask again, they insist, they lie, they demand, but they will not cross the threshold if I refuse. This much I have learned by refusing them. They ask to be let inside the way children would, they claim that they are lost, as lost children would say when asking for help, but there is no fear or despair or need in their voices. Their voices are empty as I suspect they themselves are empty, and they put me acutely in mind of the wyrm that comes to me in my nightmares, always demanding its freedom. By day, I do not recognize these children on the streets. Some of them with the black eyes appear younger than any child that has yet made the crossing to the Americas and they would have to be English as they are pale as china dolls. They become bolder as time passes. Last night when I would not answer my door, I heard their eerie, empty voices singing. A nursery rhyme tune, but none I’ve ever heard before: “Here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head!” They laughed then and oh, what horrid laughter.
Miss Ainsworth has also encountered these black-eyed children, but more disturbing, she claims that some of the people in the town have changed as well. Not as the wendigo Mr. Carey spoke of, but in some other way she finds difficult to explain. They behave like people who do not know anything about being people. For example, there is a Mr. Jonathan Foster, a blacksmith, whose son William attends Miss Ainsworth’s school. She observed him biting the shoulder of a mud-covered horse and mimicking the animal’s sounds of outrage. He did this repeatedly until he noticed himself being watched. Then he fled inside his house and slammed the door. I asked if the horse did not try to bite him in return or kick him, but Miss Ainsworth is of the opinion that the horse was too afraid of him to fight. She describes the animal’s eyes rolling, its hide shivering as though being attacked by flies, and the sounds it made akin to screams.
The common daylight folk have started to notice the unnatural things taking place. They do not talk about it, but there are whispers similar to the whispers already here when we arrived. Stories they are afraid but compelled to tell. They say this colony is cursed, some even say haunted, and I am starting to believe it might be so.
Chapter 13
The rough wet swipes of a cat tongue on his chin woke Wyatt early in the morning. He had fallen asleep sitting in a chair in the living room while reading John Bledsoe’s journal and woke with a pain in his neck. Benson sat in his lap staring up at him with quiet demand.
Feed me.
Wyatt yawned and put the book aside. He had been reading it for a few days off and on in his free time, taking particular care over certain passages that mentioned the night people and the creatures of darkness, while becoming frustrated with entries that described building houses, fences, boardwalks, outhouses, digging wells and other mundane things of day-to-day life. There were entries where John Bledsoe talked for pages about the weather and preparations for the next winter. The entries that had put him to sleep had been all about Bledsoe’s friendship with Verity Ainsworth transforming into courtship. He had asked her to marry him and, predictably, she had said yes, and they were to be married in a week. While Wyatt could understand why a man would write about such things in his journal, he could also understand how such things going on for pages and pages could make an interesting story boring to the average reader, which he suspected had a lot to do with its low popularity as a novel. He had more of a personal investment in the story than the average person though, so he read every word. Still, he couldn’t be blamed for falling asleep. The construction of outhouses and the marriage of pilgrims who had died four hundred years before Wyatt was born was not the most stimulating reading material. He expected it to get more interesting once Richard Warwick and his hunting party returned to the story, but he hadn’t gotten to that part before he’d dozed off.
Wyatt fed the cats and took a shower. It was his first official day off since calling in to work the day he’d gone to visit Aunt Tallie and he planned to visit his parents. Specifically, his father. He still couldn’t be sure what had happened to Aaron, but he felt like he should talk to him alone before coming to any crazy conclusions.
Except you know already, don’t you? he thought. He had been thinking it for days, but since he was still thinking about it with dread and not sadness, he had decided that he was not, in fact, certain. He still doubted it, if only a little.
And if his worst fear turned out to be true, what then? He had no idea. It was impossible to imagine, but he knew that if what he dreaded proved to be true, he would be forced to imagine it and then he would have a terrible choice to make. A choice he still did not know if he could make. How could he look his father in the eyes, even knowing it wasn’t his father anymore, and kill him? Silas had done it to the creature that had taken over his neighbor woman, and when he had talked about, he hadn’t seemed to question it at all, like there was no choice once he knew. Still, he had showed up at Wyatt’s door looking for a friend after it was over.
When Wyatt got out of the shower, he had water in his eyes and he had left the lights off and he nearly stepped on a tiny gnome waiting there for him on the rug. He moved his foot and stepped beside the creature at the last moment then reached for a towel.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” he demanded. He was annoyed more because he had almost squashed the thing than because it had seen him naked and fresh from the shower. “You can’t just come in here and sit on the floor! I almost stepped on you!”
The gnome gazed up at him with big, alarmed green eyes, his tiny twig-like hands clasped. “Sorry,” he said. “I’s just… I’s just wanting to ask something.”
Wyatt wrapped a towel around his waist then knelt on the rug in front of the gnome to be closer to his level. “Ask what?”
“I’s just wanting to know…” He took his little red hat off and held it nervously in his hands. He seemed bewildered about how to ask his question and Wyatt remembered that the gnomes believed he didn’t speak to them anymore. “You went to visit Miss Tallulah?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” Wyatt said. “Wait, how did you know that?”
“I’s smelling her hand cream on the book you was reading,” the gnome said with a little smile. “Can I asks something?”
“Well, yeah. What is it?” Wyatt asked.
“Can I asks if you will take me with next time you visits Miss Tallulah?”
Wyatt smiled and said, “You must be Carl.”
The gnome nodded. He had his head down and asked, “Well?”
“Look, Carl, don’t you wonder why she left you here?” Wyatt asked. He didn’t want to be mean to the gnome, they seemed harmless and even sweet as night creatures went, but he didn’t want Carl to have unrealistic expectations of his aunt either. “Don’t you think if she wanted to see you, she would come visit or she would have taken you with her?”
Carl nodded. “I expect so, Mister Wyatt, but she be dear to me,” he said. “Matters not she don’t want me no more, it still be so.”
Wyatt sighed. “Yeah,” he said. He stood up. “Okay. Next time. I don’t know when that will be though, so you may have a long wait.”
“That be fine then,” Carl said. “Thank you, Mister Wyatt.”
“You’re welcome. Ah… I need to get dressed now,” Wyatt said.
Carl bowed and trotted out of the bathroom still clutching his hat in his hands.
Wyatt shav
ed, dressed, ate some cereal and brushed his teeth, all the while feeling like he was sluggishly moving through water. He had lived so long pretending to be a day person that he had stopped noticing the difference in how it affected him compared to the night when he was much more aware and alert. He had always preferred the dark but had never felt safe in it. It wasn’t safer in the dark now that he knew more about it; it was probably a little more dangerous, but strangely, he wasn’t as afraid as he had been before knowing. Now, he left the lights off in the apartment when he was there, except for a lamp or the light above the stove to give off just enough to see by, and he often forgot to search the shadows for monsters. The monsters were there, but they had always been there and something about knowing that they were there made them less terrifying.
However, his schedule was still that of a day person. He had set his whole life up to avoid the dark and he had been living that way for a long time. It wasn’t going to change overnight but, he decided while yawning his way through his second cup of coffee, he was going to have to start making some changes or he was going to be a mess. Not only that, being less awake and alert would make him more vulnerable to the creatures that did mean to hurt him, some of which, like the black-eyed children, could attack by day if they took a mind to. Still, he had been seeing the monsters his entire life and, while they had always scared the hell out of him and gradually turned him into a neurotic headcase, he was still alive. Not because he was a fighter or because he was great at hiding or particularly fast when it came to running away but, he suspected more and more, because he wasn’t worth their time.
It was a little after 10:30 a.m. when Wyatt pulled into the driveway in front of his parents’ house. He could see that the light was on in the garage, so he went there first. He knocked on the door, but when no one answered, he opened it and stepped inside. The light he had seen in the dingy window of the door was the naked bulb above his dad’s workbench where he had been making a bookcase for Lorrie before his stroke. All the pieces, some partially assembled, were still arranged there, ready to be put together. The back had been cut out, sanded and was leaning against the wall beside the bench. There were plans for it in his dad’s handwriting, complete with little sketches, held down with a metal ruler and a flat carpenter’s pencil.