Winter Falls

by Eddie Skelson

  Joe didn’t speak. He gave a slight nod and listened.

  ‘First you need to know about the town, about Winter Falls, or at least as much that I know is true. You must already know where the name comes from, from what you saw. In Victorian times this was a fishing port, not big business but it kept the town alive and was a hub for all of the villages in the area, but the Falls were a quite a popular attraction.

  Of course the phenomena only occurs when the weather is just right so you have to be very lucky to catch it. Apparently it was quite a talking point for any Victorian gentlemen who had made the trip all the way up to see it and was successful.’

  Joe couldn’t dispute that the sight of the frozen waterfall really was something, had it not been for the awful taint inside it and of course what followed afterwards he was sure it would have been amongst the most breath-taking things he had ever seen.

  ‘In 1895 a man arrived in the town from America, his name was Jacob and he claimed to be a preacher, an evangelist of a new religion that was bringing prosperity to the Americas. He was ignored by virtually everyone. The Falls was a very Protestant town and it’s said that on a couple of occasions Jacob had to flee to nearby villages as the Winter Falls residents were getting angry at his attempts to convert them.

  But things started to go bad for the town. The fishing became very poor, boats were coming back with empty nets, and sometimes they wouldn’t come back at all. Jacob Blake had managed to find a few followers, there was some talk of him having a great deal of money and that he had used it to bribe some of the fishermen who were struggling to feed their families. However it came about Jacob’s new religion started to gain ground and anyone who converted began to prosper.’

  ‘Where did you get this information?’ Joe asked. ‘I must have spent half a day searching the net for even a sentence about the town and all I got was a sixty year old map.’

  ‘You have to let me finish Joe.’ Melanie said placing a hand on his knee. ‘I’ll answer that shortly but you will have a lot more questions so, just listen Ok?

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry.’ Joe placed his hand on hers by way of apology. Melanie smiled a little and withdrew her hand back to the heat of the mug.

  She continued her description of the town’s history. ‘While the new group continued to do well, they called themselves ‘The Order,’ the rest of the townsfolk fared badly. Soon the catches were practically non-existent, empty nets were the norm. Worse still people were going missing more frequently, some boats never returned and the crew couldn’t be found.

  Fingers were pointed at Jacob Blake and his followers. Word had got around that they met late at night and prayed to ‘other Gods’, but there were too many of them by the time some people had the guts to face him.

  He did his best to drive anyone who clung to the old faith out of the town. The sheriff for the region had been called in at one point but he found nothing amiss and left, never to return. The rumour was that he had been bribed with a bag of gold coins so heavy he could barely carry it.

  By the 1900’s the town was almost totally under the influence of Blake. Visitors were not made welcome and the ridge and surrounding area of the Waterfall was fenced off. Travellers were told that there were wild dogs in the forest and that they risked being mauled. The number of tourists began to drop and after a few years no one came at all.

  The trouble at Winter Falls seemed to spread through the region like a plague. People started to go missing on the moors and hills. Not long after, children vanished from their beds. Cattle and sheep were found in a terrible state of slaughter and out of pure fear entire villages were left deserted.’

  Melanie took a few sips of her coffee. Joe thought that she was preparing to continue her history of the town but instead she threw him a curve ball.

  ‘There are only a handful of people aged over forty in Winter Falls Joe, probably five or six.’ She said and waited for Joe’s reaction to her non sequitur.

  ‘Over forty?’ Joe repeated. ‘In the whole town?’

  ‘My father who is fifty six, I think, and Macgregor, whose age I’m not sure of but I suspect he’s older than my dad.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ Joe asked, as though he may have misheard.

  ‘There are a couple of other men, they are called Wardens, and if that seems at all odd you should know that there are no women over twenty five here either.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’ Joe scoffed.

  ‘I’m twenty three. I imagine the girl you saw in the store was Rosalie Kames, and she’s twenty two. The store keeper? That’s Mr Dunne and he is, as far as I’m aware thirty eight years old. He’s getting slow and hard to understand, like Henry but more so. In two years he will never be seen in the town again, at least, not in any recognisable way.’

  Joe desperately wanted to start questioning Melanie. This last information was vague and cryptic. It also made no sense unless he hadn’t followed the thread or misunderstood what she was saying. Melanie drank a little more coffee, taking in more than before as though it were a shot of spirits to stiffen her resolve. She returned to detailing the town’s demise.

  ‘By 1913 the almost the whole of the Falls had succumbed to Blake’s religion but not everyone would break from their faith. That is until something happened one night that cleared away any resistance to him.’

  Melanie looked at the lamp for a moment and then at Joe. She fixed his eyes with hers as though daring him to question her truthfulness.

  Joe could feel it, this was it. This was where Melanie was going to make her pitch for his sanity, to ask him to join her hand in hand in crazy land. She down put her cup and took his hand, the heat from the tea radiated between them as their skin touched.

  ‘Joe, that night, some things came, they came from out of the sea. They walked like men but were anything but I promise you. They murdered all of the men not under Jacob’s leadership and most of the women too, the exceptions were the few women in thrall to Blake. Any female over twenty five was killed alongside the men. The remaining ones that were old enough to have children were raped by the things. While they did this Jacob and his followers looked on as they performed some kind of ritual.’

  Joe saw Melanie shudder. She gripped his hand so tight that her knuckles whitened against already pale skin.

  ‘After this the women were kept locked up and out of sight until they gave birth. Any that didn’t fall pregnant, mostly the really young girls, they disappeared. Once the babies were delivered the mothers also vanished. Looking after the babies was the job of the remaining girls, those who were completely under the spell of Blake. Most of the children were boys and they bore the signs, the look, about them.

  It’s not so apparent when they are young but as they grow older the condition gets worse, more pronounced. A handful of the babies were girls, a few of them had the condition but most seemed normal.’ Melanie paused to take a breath before she was able to deliver the next part.

  ‘Twenty five years later the same thing happened again.’

  She remained silent now. Joe could tell that she had more to say but was offering him the chance to ask his questions.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure that I’m getting this Melanie.’ Joe said trying hard not to sound patronising. ‘First off how did you find all of this…history? I mean it sounds like the sort of thing that wouldn’t be spread around if it were true and then, let’s get to the even more exciting bit, creatures Mel? Really?’

  Melanie’s calm, solemn expression didn’t alter.

  ‘The source is my father, although of course he doesn’t know that I know.’ She said and let go of Joe’s hand. Despite a sensation of anger that was beginning to bubble up inside him Joe longed for her to return her grip upon him.

  ‘He keeps a journal. I don’t know why. I do know that he fancies himself as some kind of big shot in the Order. It was thanks to him that the records for the town are, as far as you would be aware, accurate for births and deaths for every year since ninete
en sixty.’

  She searched Joes face for a sign that this might have pinched at his pride but he only continued to stare at her, but she could sense his anxiety and confusion.

  ‘He realised that questions might be asked if they weren’t kept up to date. The only reason he didn’t do the others, the ones you were after was because they were the war years and he figured no one would be able to unravel the mess from that period, of course he didn’t take into account computers and data analysts.’ She smiled weakly at this.

  ‘I think the journal is meant to be like a gospel or something. A record for future generations to marvel at how wonderful he was.’

  ‘So what is the Order? Is it like a fundamentalist group or something?’ Joe asked.

  ‘It’s not Christianity Joe, or anything else you think of as religion. This is older, much older. The Order is a cult I suppose. They hide their Gods and they keep their practices secret because if the outside world finds out things will go very badly for them.’

  ‘The guy in the forest.’ Joe said. ‘Obviously that is part of their...practice?’

  ‘Oh Joe.’ Melanie said in a sympathetic tone. ‘That is just a taste of what is happening here. The Order is not just some group of idiots worshipping some pathetic God in the sky. What they pray to is real, what it can do for them is real.’

  ‘What do you mean real?’ Joe asked suspiciously.

  ‘I told you that there were townsfolk killed by Blake and his follower’s right?’

  ‘Yeah, and you said things came out of the sea too.’ Joe said, trying to avoid sounding cynical but failing.

  ‘That’s right. Blake and his people couldn’t have overwhelmed the remaining townspeople alone, even with their numbers growing there were too few of them for a war. These were men of the sea Joe, the Winter Falls men were strong, tough and very willing to fight. So Jacob called on his God and his call was answered.

  ‘Answered how?’ Joe interrupted.

  ‘The things. They came to the town from the sea. They came and tore those who wouldn’t follow to pieces. Any that tried to escape the were blocked by Jacob and the rest of the Order. The Deep Ones soon got to those and finished them off.’

  ‘Deep Ones?’

  ‘Aye Joe. That’s what the Order calls them. The brood of the Sea God, Father Dagon.’ She stopped now. She knew that this was the point where Joe would begin to doubt her sanity, her honesty or both.

  He didn’t say anything at first. He appeared to be in a state of conflict, she could easily see his feelings for her. They were written into his face, his eyes, and the turn of his mouth. He stroked at his chin and looked surprised that he found stubble there.

  ‘Do you want me to carry on Joe?’ Melanie asked after he had remained silent.

  He breathed deeply. ‘Yes...please.’ he said quietly.

  ‘Joe, I’ll tell you as simply as I can because no matter how I explain what goes on here you will think I’m crazy. The reason that there are no men over forty here, none other than my father and his lackey Macgregor, is because they change. They change into those things and go into the sea. There are no girls over twenty five because every twenty five years those same things come ashore and rape them. If they become pregnant they are locked up until they give birth and then they are killed out in the forest. The girls who don’t get pregnant are kept for a while, to raise the children, eventually they are disposed of. I’m twenty five in two years Joe.’

  Joe hadn’t drunk any of the coffee. Instead he had just wrapped his hands around the mug and let the heat warm him. His eyes left Melanie’s he and looked into the coffee. The poor light made it look much darker than it was, like a pool of ink.

  She hadn’t said monsters but he knew it was what she was trying to describe. Creatures, things, Deep Ones. All the same thing, monsters.

  He could buy the cult, psychopathic leaders and deluded followers, even the murders, the rituals, and the strange look of the males in the town. It was all within the grasp of Joe’s belief system. Monsters were not. Nothing came out of the sea to rape young girls. Adult men didn’t turn into sea creatures or monsters.

  Melanie reached out a hand and lightly gripped Joe’s thigh again. ‘I know you can’t believe this Joe, but look around you. Look at this church, the body in the forest, the Falls. All of this is because of what Jacob Blake started and what my father is continuing to do.’ She pressed her hands around Joes once more.

  ‘I told you that they were concerned about you working for the government, my father mentions this in his journal. I’m not entirely sure what happened but sometime in the 1930’s a place in America, a place like Winter Falls, was assaulted by government agents and the military. My father says that Jacob had family there, it’s where he travelled from.

  To stop it happening again the Order invested a great deal of effort into performing a ritual to protect the town from outsiders. That’s the reason it’s impossible to find your way in or out without the key. It took twenty years to complete the ritual and this is why so many people went missing. The Order needed them to be offered as sacrifices to their God. When the spell was complete no one entered or left without the Orders approval.’

  This was too much for Joe. He pulled his hands away from Melanie’s touch and placed his mug on the floor next to hers.

  ‘Monsters and spells Melanie? Seriously, don’t you think there is enough crazy in this fucking town without that as well?’

  He stood and shivered a little as the cold material of his trousers brushed against his skin. The light from the lamp only illuminated a few square feet of the church and Joe began to walk up to its limit where the yellow glow faded into the dark.

  Melanie pleaded with him, looking over the pew to where he stood.

  ‘Joe you have to listen to what I’m saying. My father will have you killed in an instant if he realises that you are a threat to the town.’

  He turned to face her, in the poor light shadows pooled in his pale face and made him look ghostly and scared. He was scared.

  ‘Melanie I don’t want to hear any more of this to be honest. I get that this town is in one way or another, fucked. I am fully aware that someone or some people, probably that slimy bastard Billy Duggan is capable of murder.’

  Melanie interrupted ‘You met Billy Duggan?’ She sounded shocked.

  ‘Yeah, he came to my room with a message from your dad. I think he was just pissing up the wall, making sure I knew he was around.’ Joe waved his hand dismissively, ‘I don’t give a fuck about him anyway, or your dad or anyone in this shithole to be perfectly honest. I just want out.’

  ‘What about me Joe, don’t you give a fuck about me?’ Melanie rose from the pew. ‘I’ve risked my life to make sure you know what’s going on, to try and protect you. I’ve given you everything I have Joe.’ She walked up to him and touched his face. ‘Everything.’ She said quietly.

  Joe swallowed. Guilt poured into his system quenching his adrenalin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said and took her hand, holding it against his cheek. ‘I’m really sorry, Melanie.’ He struggled to find a way to express the frustration inside him. He looked into her eyes, they were wide and frightened and he thought close to tears.

  ‘I don’t understand. This is a nightmare. I feel like I’m actually in a fucking nightmare and I can’t wake up.’

  ‘How do you think I feel Joe?’ Melanie wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head onto his chest. ‘I live this. Day in, day out. I have had to hide myself from them for years, they don’t know that I can read and write, that I have seen what it’s like outside, that I’ve seen them and what they do.’

  Joe put his fingers into Melanie’s hair and massaged them into the luxurious strands. He closed his eyes and let his head rest on hers. Melanie felt his fingers stop their gentle motion.

  ‘How do you know what the outside is like, I thought you couldn’t leave? Joe asked.

  ‘My dad has a computer, he doesn’t know that I have his pa
ssword.’ Melanie rubbed her face a little on Joe’s coat and squeezed him gently. ‘He’s not as smart as he thinks he is.’

  Joe gripped Melanie’s arms and gently pushed her away so that he could look at her.

  ‘Your Dad has a computer,’ he said, slowly.

  ‘Yes.’ Melanie said, a puzzled look drawn upon her face. ‘In the guest room. It’s locked but there’s a key on top of the tall clock. I used to stand on a stool to get at it when I was little.’

  ‘Can it access the Internet?’ Joe asked quickly.

  ‘Yes.’

  Joe’s knees almost buckled. Melanie could feel him sway. ‘Are you Ok?’ She asked.

  Joe regained his balance. He had been overcome by the sheer weight of Melanie’s news, his head spun as the possibilities rushed into his mind.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ, why didn’t you tell me this sooner?’

  ‘I...I didn’t think...’ Melanie stammered.

  ‘Didn’t think what?’ Joe’s voice was excited and angry at the same time. ‘That direct communication to the outside world, outside of this place would be useful?’

  ‘H...how...how would you do that?’ Melanie asked as a child would ask an adult how a combustion engine might work.

  Joe stared in stunned silence. ‘Fucking...email, Skype, Facebook. Jesus Christ I could add this fucking place to Foursquare!’

  Melanie stared without any glimmer of comprehension. Joe tried to calm down. He found himself rubbing his hands up and down Melanie’s arms as he spoke.

  ‘You know this stuff, right? If you have been on the net you know this stuff?’

  ‘I know the news.’ She answered. ‘The BBC and the Microsoft Explorer, there’s news on that too.’ She said, her eyebrows raised a little.

  Joe tried to picture Melanie at the machine. What she would see or understand if she had never seen a computer before. ‘So when you use his computer all you hit is the big blue ‘E’ I’m guessing. Is that right?’

  Melanie nodded. ‘And I put the arrow on it with the...thing, and then Microsoft comes on, with the news.’