Hello, readers.
Publishing the records of Dr. Parce has kept me pretty busy, but it’s not the only thing I’m doing. I’m stranded, after all, and I’m trying to find out as much as I can about this town.
It’s called Hammersmith Valley. I only know that because of a wrecked sign at the end of the road. This whole place is destroyed. Absolutely deserted. The windows are blown out. The houses are falling apart. Power lines lay on the ground. I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to have electricity.
There’s no one here but me.
But there is a library, and there are all the notes and photographs and newspapers that people left behind. I’ll be collecting everything I can find and sending it to you in case something happens to me. Someone has to finish this.
I have to warn you: some of these stories I’ve found are dark. Very dark. Something out of a horror movie.
But if you’re ready to hang with me and see what I’ve learned about this world I’m in, keep reading.
Here is the first of the Tales from Hammersmith Valley.
A Small Price
For Roman
Ethan didn’t think it took a monster to know one, but he was sure it took a monster to kill one.
He sipped his beer and listened to the crash of the waves outside. The open windows let the salty breeze into the bar, enhancing the taste of his beverage. He dropped a few dollars next to a greasy plate topped with crumbs of fried batter.
The bartender was quick to sweep away both the plate and the cash. His rheumy eyes peered at Ethan from between a dirty wool cap and a brown beard.
“How was your lunch, stranger?”
Ethan kept his gaze on his glass. “Fine, thanks.”
“You a tourist?”
“Not really.” Ethan took another drink and considered the sound of the ocean again. “Business seems awfully slow here.”
“Well, everyone’s busy getting ready for…” The bartender caught himself and suddenly grew very interested in wiping some glasses by the till.
“For what?”
“For… nothing. Never mind.”
Ethan pulled a thick roll of cash out of his jacket pocket and thumbed through it. “It sure seems like something is going on around here.”
The man’s eyes fixated on the money. “The festival. This time of year that’s what everyone is working on. Even me. You’re my only customer today.”
Ethan peeled off a five-dollar bill and looked it over. “A festival, huh? Must be a pretty private affair. I didn’t see any tourists on my way here.”
“That’s right. Nobody comes here from outside. You’re the first visitor in a long time. Years, even.”
“Why?”
“Couldn’t tell you, stranger.”
“Maybe somebody else will.” Ethan stuffed the money back in his pocket.
The bartender winced. “Wait a minute, mister. What do you want to know about the festival?”
“Whatever you care to tell me.”
“Well, it’s tonight, and it goes until midnight. You know autumn starts tomorrow? We throw it every year so we can have a good harvest and a good fishing season. The village needs all that stuff so we don’t starve.”
“Yeah, I know.” Ethan finished his beer and headed for the door.
The bartender followed him and grabbed his sleeve. “Hold on.”
Ethan’s temper almost got the better of him. It would have been so easy to drop his human disguise, to show this bartender the pure darkness underneath. If that didn’t convince him to take his hands off Ethan, it would have been even easier to just rip him apart.
But Ethan didn’t do that. He kept it together and fixated his cold blue eyes on the man. “Tell me something interesting, then.”
The bartender let go of Ethan’s arm. “At midnight… we feed the beast.” He went pale, like he’d just confessed to a crime. They regarded each other in silence for a moment.
“The beast, huh? What do you feed it?”
The bartender stammered, not looking at Ethan anymore. “We… aw, jeez, mister, I really don’t wanna talk about this anymore.”
“That’s a shame.” Ethan pulled the fiver back out of his pocket and set it on the bar. After a moment of thought, he threw down another five. “For your trouble. Thanks again.” He left the trembling man behind and stepped out the door.
He had gotten what he wanted; he was at the right place. His quarry was here. Pressing the bartender any further would have been risky. He’d have to gather more information in the village.
He fumed at how close he had gotten to losing his cool at the man. A mere human was no match for a creature like him. Then he reminded himself that that was what set him apart. He kept those urges under control so he could protect humans from the monsters that didn’t.
As soon as he got to the main road, he glanced to the right. He reassured himself that the boat he’d brought over here was still moored at the marina. To his left, further inland, he saw nothing but trees and meager farmland. The village was ahead.
The houses looked modest but comfortable, mostly built out of whitewashed wood. This place was a little more primitive than he had gotten used to. He saw kerosene lamps but no lightbulbs. His beer had come from a keg and his transportation here had been a plain sailboat.
The year in this world was 1905, as he had found out before his arrival to the island. He’d lived through the early twentieth century in his own home world, but that was a long time ago.
As he walked the sandy path through the village, he noticed that the place had everything except people. The houses and shops were deserted. His right ear picked up the white noise of the ocean while his left heard the surprisingly cold wind stirring up the trees in the distance. He would have thought he was in the wrong place if not for the faint sounds of shouting just ahead. He quickened his pace until he was past the last houses on the north side of the village.
A strange sight gave him pause. On either side of the path were several rows of concrete bowls on waist-high pedestals, resembling bird baths. They showed varying degrees of age and erosion, but nearly all of them were covered with melted candles and assorted small treasures and keepsakes. At the base of each pedestal, a name was carved. He stepped back and scanned the names—Emily, Christine, Allie, Susan, Roxanne, Elizabeth. All girls’ names.
The structure that stood out was the one farthest from the path. It had no dirt, stains, or decorations on it. The detail in the edges was still clear, not yet blurred by wind and rain. There was no name at the bottom.
Ethan swallowed his growing dread and continued along the path.
The island sloped up ahead of him towards a sharp peak, where the sand and sparse grass gave way to a sheer cliff above the sea. Assembled on the promontory was a crowd of a few hundred people forming a vague horseshoe shape. A small group stood apart.
The grassy hill leading up to the cliff was strewn with tents, tables, and wooden stakes all decorated with autumn-themed streamers and fresh flowers. A ring of stones encircled a shallow pit full of ashes.
As Ethan got closer, he could discern words from the shouting. An old woman’s voice carried over top of the crowd.
“Today is the day the winds grow cold. We have heard the beast draw his first breath of the year. He stirs in his hunger. We give him this offering to protect our village and ensure good fortune for our farmers and fishermen.”
Ethan got to the crowd and started making his way through. No one seemed to notice him. Everyone’s eyes were forward. When Ethan got to the front of the crowd, he could see the people standing separate from it.
Seven young women wearing plain sackcloth dresses stood behind the old crone, who held her hands in the air while she shouted. She was standing at the edge of a sinkhole cutting into the ground, probably four feet long and two wide, too deep to see the bottom.
The old woman’s curly grey hair was piled up on top of her head in a giant lopsided bun, and her crooked fingers were covered with silver and gold rings. A cold breeze kicked up and billowed her blood-red shawl like a cape.
Ethan—and the rest of the crowd—jumped back at a rush of hot air and a terrible noise coming up from the hole in the ground. It was a long, low ripping sound, the snore of whatever behemoth had taken up residence in the belly of the island.
The old crone turned to the young women. “Cast your lots! The beast demands his offering! The lottery must begin!”
Each of the girls held out clenched fists. The crowd went totally silent. Ethan’s guts began to crawl when he saw the fear in the women’s faces. They all kept their eyes shut tight.
The old woman produced a wooden bowl from somewhere underneath her shawl and walked over to the girl at the far left. With a quiet word from the crone, the young woman opened both her hands and dropped what looked like a pair of red cubes into the bowl. The crone went down the line, pausing at each girl to let them drop their cubes. Each pair was a different color—orange, yellow, green.
The fifth of the seven girls was easily the prettiest of the lot, with fair skin and wavy brown hair that glimmered in the overhead sun. Her cubes were blue. Ethan thought, but he couldn’t be sure, that the crone’s hand passed over the bowl as those blue cubes landed.
As soon as the seventh girl’s violet cubes were in the bowl, the old woman turned and presented it to the crowd. Everyone gathered around, including Ethan. The cubes turned out to be painted dice.
“Red, four and two—six!” the people who could see into the bowl called out to the rest. They did so simultaneously. It must have been part of this mad ritual. “Orange, five and three—eight! Yellow, two and one—three! Green, six and six—twelve! Blue, one and one—two! Indigo, six and four—ten! Purple, five and two—seven!”
The fifth girl, the fair one with the lowest roll, dropped to her knees and sobbed. The rest cried too, but they didn’t fall.
“The lots are cast,” said the old woman. “Dear Cora will be our virgin sacrifice to the beast this year. One life lost for the good of us all. A small price to pay.”
Ethan froze. He had pieced together what this lottery was for, but to hear that lady say it so brazenly still shocked him.
Some of the crowd, probably family members, rushed forward to claim the women who had been spared by the whim of the dice. Only Cora was left alone to cry by the sinkhole. The horrid breath of the beast came roaring up again as if anticipating its delicate meal.
“Everyone come forward,” the old woman said. “Lay hands on young Cora and thank her for the bountiful year to come. Now is the time for any final words you wish to say to her before she is dropped to the beast. We will all be too busy with the festival between now and midnight.”
At the thought of the girl falling down that sinkhole, Ethan bit back a sudden surge of anger. Were these people really about to let this happen?
He forced himself to stay calm and watch them. They put hands on Cora’s shoulders, prayed over her, whispered in her ears. Some of them wept as they walked away.
One young man about Cora’s age became seriously distraught. His face turned red and his fist clenched around her sleeve, as if he were determined to follow her to her doom. She didn’t seem to notice; she was still in the middle of an intense crying fit herself.
A man of about sixty came up to the younger man and gripped his shoulder. “That’s enough, Asher,” he said. “She had the same chance as everyone else.”
But the young man didn’t budge.
The old woman came to Asher’s other side and whispered something in his ear. His entire demeanor changed. His face went blank and he relaxed his grasp on Cora’s dress. He allowed himself to be led away by the older man in silence.
The old woman turned to the other villagers. “Let me remind you that men have tried to stop the sacrifice before, out of love or selfish desire or just because they fancied themselves heroes. What happened to them all—be they men of our village or outsiders who got word of our custom? All they ever managed to do was stir the wrath of the beast, get themselves killed, and ruin our harvest. Every time the ritual is disrupted, we lose more lives than just one.”
Everyone kept their heads down as they finished giving Cora their goodbyes and headed back down the road. Ethan shook his head. Out of a few hundred people, just one had shown any will to go against this fate.
He could have spoken up to the old woman himself, but he’d seen people in the thrall of fear and belief before. Instead of rooting out the thing that scared them, they’d turn on the dissenter. That was one thing he didn’t miss about Grünwald.
The crowd didn’t cause him any concern. He could have singlehandedly slaughtered this village if he wanted to. But that was no solution. The whole point of going incognito was to protect the people and leave the village somewhat intact, just without its beast.
Better to let them continue with their ritual for now while he gathered more information. The old woman had just confirmed what the bartender had told him—the sacrifice would occur at midnight. That gave him a little less than twelve hours.
What he could do right now was offer the girl some hope. He buried his anger and joined the last of the stragglers walking up to Cora. By then, she had calmed down a little and was giving quiet responses to the people who talked to her. When it was his turn, he put his hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered.
She glanced up at the unfamiliar voice. Her puffy, reddened eyes stared into his blue ones. Her grief subsided and she gazed at the stranger with something like awe. Ethan didn’t want to do anything to alert the sheep around him to a wolf in their presence, but he wanted to reassure this girl. He let a fraction of his real strength show through when he squeezed her shoulder. Then he left without another word, feeling her eyes still on his back.
Ethan went out of his way to be a polite but unobtrusive presence that afternoon. He overpaid for food and drink and he pitched in whenever someone needed a hand. He cut wood and helped pile it in the ring of stones for a bonfire. He helped the bartender haul dozens of barrels of wine from one end of the village to the other. The people bustled around him, setting up stalls and adorning every horizontal surface with the last of the summer blooms.
Ethan was carrying a tray full of cut fruit for one of the older women when a group of children ran down the road in his direction, all holding flowers. He held the tray up over his head and the kids parted around him, never missing a step, chanting as they went.
Who’s for this year? Who’s for the beast?
Poor, poor Cora gets to be the feast!
The kids all ran to the same house up the road and threw their flowers onto the doorstep. The door was open and they all ran inside. A few seconds later they emerged carrying jewelry, letters, and small articles of clothing like shoes and a summer hat. They ran back the way they had come, streaming around Ethan like before.
A middle-aged man with an alcoholic’s nose followed the kids out of the house. He stopped on the porch to look at all the discarded flowers. As soon as the children were out of sight, the man put his hands in his pockets, closed his eyes, and wept.
After Ethan had spent a couple of hours establishing himself as useful, he began to ask casual questions of the villagers. No one knew exactly how long this harvest ritual had gone on, but for sure it had been longer than they had been making those dozens of miniature shrines for sacrificed girls. It had always been young women, always been virgins.
One detail that Ethan found fascinating was that no one seemed to have any idea what this beast looked like. One of the farmers gave him a furtive tip that the children sometimes drew pictures of the beast, but Thirza took them all.
“Thirza?”
“The old woman. The one who oversees the lottery. She’s been doing it as long as I’ve been alive.”
“Where does she live?”
“At the end of the road.”
Ethan thanked the man and dropped the matter, still avoiding obtaining too much information from any one person.
From others, he gathered that the sinkhole wasn’t the only entrance to the cave. The ocean flowed into it at the bottom of the cave on the north end, where the monster swam in and out as it pleased. But the current and the rocks made a climb or a swim into the cavern far too treacherous for mortals to attempt.
Ethan also learned that Cora was nineteen, her father was a well-respected fisherman, and her mother had died when Cora was quite young. If this ritual went as planned, this man would be alone in the world.
While Ethan and several other people took a break for supper, he watched two men coming down the path. It was the young man who had become upset—Asher, Ethan recalled—and the older man who had led him away. They now wore leather belts full of stoneworking tools and thick trousers caked with white dust.
The pair of them approached the unmarked concrete pedestal, and Ethan realized the bowl of it had been filled with the belongings the children had taken from Cora’s house. The elderly mason stood and watched while Asher, probably his apprentice, carved Cora’s name into the pedestal. Asher’s eyes still looked vacant as they had after Thirza had whispered to him. Even so, his hands shook as he worked, for which he received a scolding.
By the time the sun touched the ocean to the west, preparations were largely finished and the people began to gather on the grassy slope, where all the food and wine had been set up. Ethan took the opportunity to sneak away and find the old woman’s house.
Like all the homes on this island, the door was unlocked. With a long glance each way down the road, Ethan let himself in. At first glance he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was furnished with very little—a bed, a table and chair, a lantern, a wash basin.
The only unusual element in the room was a portrait over the fireplace. It was a painting of Thirza herself. The lined face, the giant bun of grey hair, and the blood-red shawl were unmistakable. The picture drew Ethan’s interest because of its age. It was yellowed and weathered, on the verge of crumbling into flakes of paper, but it showed Thirza as Ethan had seen her just a few hours ago. He looked for a date, but the bottom corner below the artist’s signature had been torn off.
He scanned the home for anything else of note. At the back of the house was a tall wooden bureau with a keyhole in each drawer.
He stepped back outside and looked again. Everyone was busy at the north end of the island and nobody was coming this way. Then he tried opening the drawers. They were locked.
Just for a second, he cast the human disguise off his right arm. His real limbs—tentacles so black they reflected no light at all—slithered into the simple locks and moved the bolts. His arm returned to its human form and he checked each drawer quickly. Three of the four drawers only held clothes.
The bottom drawer, though, was full of papers. With another glance outside, he emptied the drawer and set its contents on the table. A small slip of paper fell out of the stack and drifted to the floor.
He didn’t want to spend any more time in this place, so he went through the papers as fast as he could. As the old farmer had said, most of them were drawings and watercolor paintings. “The Beast” was written on several of the pictures. By and large they depicted different sea creatures—whales, giant squids, saurian things with fins and tails and teeth.
Ethan stuffed all the drawings back into the drawer. After a quick visual sweep, he saw the piece of paper that had fallen. He picked it up and examined it. The paper was yellowed and wrinkled, a torn strip. He didn’t need to walk back across the room to know that it was the ripped corner of the portrait, or that the date written on it was in the same hand as the artist’s signature.
1844.
At sunset, the bonfire was lit. The casks were cracked open, and skewers of meat, fish, and vegetables were stuck in the ground near the flames. Torches were lit at the fire and stuck at intervals along the path all the way from the edge of the village to the sinkhole. Ethan nursed a glass of the dark red wine and stared at the revelers. Once the festivities began in full, he would be able to snoop around unnoticed.
Someone sat down on the grass next to him. “Do you like it?”
He turned. It was Cora. She had changed into a much longer white dress. Her chestnut hair was in a loose braid over her shoulder and her head was crowned with a weave of baby’s breath. She’d been crying, although that did not detract from her beauty. Ethan thought of her father and his heart ached.
“Like what?” he asked.
“The wine. It’s a Cab… um… Cabernet. They had me pick.”
He glanced at the bitter swill in his glass. “Do you know anything about wine?”
“No.” Despite everything, she laughed. They both did. To be polite, Ethan took another sip.
She scooted a little closer. “You’re not from the village.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re different. Everyone’s talking about how strong you are. How you just showed up out of nowhere and you’re helping out without asking for anything in return.” She paused. “You’re a hero, aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer. Her slender hand reached across and grabbed the collar of his jacket, bidding him to turn to her again. When he did, their faces were less than an inch apart. Her breath was warm and smelled of summer fruit.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered. “Please help me.”
“I’m going to.”
“There aren’t any heroes here. The men are afraid of Thirza and do what she says.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone else gets older, but she stays the same. Someone has to protect us from the beast. The men can’t do it. Anytime someone steps up to save one of us from being sacrificed, she says something to them, makes them weak and afraid. But you…”
Ethan tried to pull back a little, but her desperation gave her strength.
“You know, the beast only wants virgins,” Cora whispered. “If I’m not a virgin anymore, they’ll have to choose someone else.”
“Stop. Stop.” Ethan removed her hand from his collar and turned away. “That’s not the answer.”
She sat back, her face flushing. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just so scared.”
“We’re going to fix this,” Ethan said. “You’re going to go on after tonight and be someone’s beautiful wife, and you’ll give him fine children. But it’s going to be somebody your own age.”
Cora composed herself and created some space between them. “You talk like an old man.”
He wasn’t going to tell her that he was old enough to be her grandfather two hundred times over, that he’d seen things she could read about in history books. Instead, he changed the subject. “Go be with your father,” he said. “Leave this to me. You’re not going to die tonight.”
“There you are! Where have you been?”
Ethan looked up in time to see the old crone, Thirza, seizing Cora by the arm. She dragged the girl to her feet and got in Ethan’s face with a withering glare. He swallowed the urge to return the glare, feigning drunkenness instead.
“You had best just get out of here, outsider,” Thirza said.
Behind the old woman’s eyes, Ethan saw something that told him she resembled him more than she did the people around them. Only he saw the spark that jumped between the rings on her fingers. Then she whispered words of command in a language he knew well, a language that told him his impression of her was correct. If only she knew that such words held no power over him. Not anymore.
“Sure thing,” he answered with a slur, getting unsteadily to his feet and letting the sour wine slosh out of his glass. “Yes ma’am.”
He caught Cora’s look of utter despair as he turned away and headed for the village. Thirza pulled the girl in the other direction, toward the promontory. As soon as the old hag’s eyes were off him, Ethan dropped the act and started walking faster.
He passed Cora’s house. Her father slumbered on the porch, having already drank himself into oblivion. Ethan couldn’t blame the man.
The south end of the village was close. Between the houses and the bar, Ethan would be alone and out of the torchlight. He could drop his human disguise and slink into the cave under cover of darkness.
He was just stepping off the road when he ran into someone also creeping around in the shadows. He caught the interloper by the shirt front, turned, and shoved him into the light. It was the young man, the apprentice mason.
Ethan bristled with anger. “What are you doing?”
The young man’s trembling hands gripped the wooden handle of a tile hammer. He looked terrified, but still readied himself to swing the sharp side of the hammer at Ethan’s head. “I could ask you the same thing, s-stranger.”
“Your name is Asher.”
“That’s right.”
Ethan smirked. “You want to save the girl?”
“More than anything.”
“You plan to kill the beast with that thing?”
“It’s the b-best I’ve got.”
Ethan’s smile faded. “You’d die for Cora, wouldn’t you?”
“Y-yes. Now step aside.”
“You’d better leave this to me, Asher.”
“No. I saw you talking to Cora. If you’re going to the cave, I’m going with you.”
“It’s going to be dark. Can you see in complete darkness, Asher? I can.”
Without a word, the young man stuck his hammer in his toolbelt and pulled up a torch from the side of the road.
Ethan sighed. “Let’s go.”
Staying in human form made the trip to the cave harder, but not by much. For his part, Asher turned out to be surprisingly competent. They took turns holding the torch above the water as they climbed.
“What’s your name, stranger?”
“I’d rather not say.”
The boy glowered. “I’m giving you a little trust here. If you won’t tell me your name, at least tell me what you’re doing here.”
“I heard about the beast, so I came to kill it. That’s all.”
“Why?”
Ethan gritted his teeth. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine first. No one else but you is out here trying to stop this. Why is that? Who is she to you that you’re willing to risk death for her?”
Asher stopped climbing. “Well, mister, she’s the girl I wanted to marry. My father is a farmer. Every autumn after the ritual I’d get so excited to bring our harvest to the village. Because then I’d get to trade with the fisherman’s daughter. Every year I tried to gin up the courage to talk to her, but every year I failed. And now that I’m finally living in the village and apprenticing with the mason, I thought I’d get my chance. But…”
“I see. Does she know you wanted to marry her?”
“Of course not, mister. Even you couldn’t miss that she’s the prettiest girl in the village. I was never the only one trying to get her attention.”
“But you are the only one on his way to put a spike in the beast’s head.”
Asher was quiet for a minute. “Look, mister, fair’s fair. I answered your question.”
“That’s right, you did.” Ethan sighed. “I hunt for a particular monster called the Destroyer. I came here to see if this beast is it.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“One for one, Asher.”
“Fine. What’s your question?”
“What did the old woman say to you to get you to let go of Cora earlier today?”
“You know, mister, I would tell you if I could. I didn’t understand what she said, but I had to let go. Old Thirza does that. In fact, it was something she did almost every time she saw a man talking to Cora the last couple of years. I wish I knew what she said. Is that enough of an answer for you?”
“Actually, it is.”
“Well, then. What do you get out of killing the beast? Is it for sport? Or do you plan to ask the village for some kind of payment after it’s done?”
“Not at all. None of you will owe me anything. I suppose I do it because I’m something of a monster myself. When the time comes, you’ll see.”
That seemed to satisfy the young man. They descended in silence, winding around to the cliff. Now they were close enough to the water that the spray from the waves wet the stone face.
Ethan was sure Asher would slip off and be battered to death by the current against the rocks, but the boy gripped the cliff face with a tenacity only a foolhardy young man in love could muster.
They managed to clamber around to the mouth of the cave, but they were going to have to swim to get in.
Ethan pointed. “You see those waves? You’ll never make it. You’ll drown.”
“Can you make it?”
“Yes. I can.”
“Great. I’ll hold onto your back and carry the torch. You swim us into the cave.”
The boy wasn’t going to be deterred. With a sigh, Ethan slid into the water. Asher climbed onto his back and wrapped one arm around his shoulders. The young man was trembling again, but he made no move to turn back.
The water was dark enough that Ethan could cheat a little. He let his human guise slip from everywhere below his shoulders to ease his swimming. Above the surface, Asher’s torch threw flickering orange light across the walls and ceiling of the cave. There was a shore not far ahead, but the torchlight wasn’t strong enough to illuminate further than that.
“It’s hot in here,” Asher said. “There’s definitely something alive in this place.”
“Maybe. Hey, it’s shallow here. You can stand.”
Asher let go of Ethan and shifted his torch to his left hand. He drew his hammer with his right and crept forward. He kept his eyes up, as if the beast was likely to drop on them from the ceiling. In the distance they could see a vertical shaft of soft white light.
“There’s the sinkhole,” Ethan said. “That’s where they’ll drop her.”
As they moved forward, their feet left the hard, wet stone and stepped on something that crunched. Asher brought his torch down and let out an involuntary yelp of fear.
“B-bones!” he shouted.
Ethan almost snapped at the boy to shut up, but he was right. All around the shaft of moonlight were human bones. Ethan inspected them quickly. None bore any signs of aging. He could tell they were all female. Some had fractures to the tibia, fibula, even the femur. A glance at the ceiling told him the drop was about twenty, twenty-five feet. A drop feet-first would break legs without killing. They would be helpless, unable to escape whatever came for them in here.
Asher’s torch moved. “Over here, mister!”
Ethan looked. Whatever he had expected to see, it wasn’t this. An ancient wooden table stood by the wall of the cave. It was lined with glass jars and beakers full of colorful fluids and animal parts in embalming fluid. At the end was a kerosene burner with a black iron cauldron on top. The burner had a low blue flame and the thick red liquid in the cauldron bubbled like magma. Feathers, aged papers, and tiny animal bones littered the floor around the table.
Ethan shook his head. “Unbelievable. I should have known.”
“What? What’s going on, mister?”
Ethan was about to explain, but a gust of cold air hit him from behind and cut him off. The almighty roar echoed through the cave, hellishly loud in this enclosed space. Asher was screaming, but Ethan couldn’t hear it over the cacophony.
Ethan looked up, and his eyes went wide just as Asher’s torch hit the floor and blew out.
Even the terrible roar of the beast couldn’t bother the villagers now. The festival was at its peak. Drunken men and women danced around the fire, swigging wine and stuffing their faces with meat and fruit. Singing and shouting and laughing filled the air. The smoke from the fire hung low around the island, casting a dull orange glow over everything. Clothes were coming off.
Cora stood on the cliff and stared at the dark hole that would be her doom. For an instant, she was filled with disgust at the people around her, naked and inebriated, celebrating that their lives would go on for one more year at the cost of hers. A horrid thought arose in her mind—the thought of flinging herself off the cliff to cost the villagers their sacrifice. But that wouldn’t work, just like her thought of offering herself to the stranger wouldn’t have worked. They would just cast lots again, and one of the other girls would die tonight along with her.
To minimize the loss of life, she had to go through with this. There was no other way. For what must have been the tenth time that day, she started to sob.
A pair of cold, wrinkled hands clasped her face. “Dear child. Pretty baby. So young, so beautiful. Please don’t cry.”
Cora opened her eyes to see Thirza. The crone brushed a stray lock of brown hair out of Cora’s face.
“Tonight is about you,” Thirza said. “All of this is for you. You’re the princess for the night.”
Cora pulled away from Thirza.
The old woman clicked her tongue. “You asked for a hero? Well, you are the hero. Your youth and innocence will save everyone. You should be happy.” She took a long, deep breath, pulling the cold autumn air in with a loud hiss. “It’s time. Be brave for your village.”
Cora stared down at the sinkhole that would be her tomb. The opening stretched out in front of her, looking as enormous as a train tunnel, straining to swallow her whole. In that moment, the cave and the beast were one in their desire to devour her life and make her nothing.
Thirza put her hand between Cora’s shoulder blades. The first nudge was gentle. The second, not so much.
“Stop! Stop!”
Cora, Thirza, and the conscious villagers looked toward their homes. A young man was running up the path, sopping wet. Cora recognized him. It was Asher, the stonemason’s apprentice. He was about her age, but they had only spoken a few times.
Asher stopped a few paces short of the sinkhole and pointed at Cora. “Don’t do it! It’s a trick!”
Thirza stepped around Cora in a huff, her red shawl billowing in the wind. “Watch your tongue, boy. Unless you want the beast to eat it.”
Asher shook his head. “It’s a trick of the air. The cold north wind. It pushes the hot summer air up and out of the cave. There’s no beast. None at all. You’ve been lying to us.”
“How dare you!” Thirza screeched. She grabbed Cora’s arm and shoved her.
Cora’s hands reached out in desperation, but there was nothing around the edges of the sinkhole to grab onto. Both Cora and Asher screamed as the girl vanished down the dark shaft. The crone advanced on the young man next. “Now I’ll deal with you.”
Another bellowing cry ripped up through the cave. But this was not the rushing air of the beast’s roar. This was something else entirely.
The villagers shrieked in terror as a creature darker than the night sky emerged from the depths of the sinkhole. A mass of squirming tendrils formed the core of its being—there was no discernible head. It had Cora in its grasp.
Even Thirza backpedaled in fear as the monster bore down on them. It turned the thrashing girl on her feet and set her down on the grass. Asher ran to her side and pulled her away from the undulating mass of tentacles. The two of them held onto each other as they stared at the horrific scene.
The tentacles reached for the ground and congealed into a single mass. It changed shape and color, morphing and shrinking down until the monster was gone and only Ethan stood there. He held the cauldron in his hands.
“Here’s your beast!” he yelled. “She’s been feeding on your young women for generations to keep herself alive!”
Thirza turned pale, grasping at her face and shaking her head wildly. “No! It’s not true! This outsider is lying to you!”
“Then you won’t mind if I do this.” Ethan turned over the cauldron and dumped the red potion in the grass.
The sound that came out of Thirza was nothing like a human could make—an echoing wail of a dozen sirens coming together in one dissonant keening. She jumped and stamped and pulled her hair in her fury. At the apex of her rage, her face split open into a skull wreathed in fire and snakes.
“Witch!” the people cried in terror. “Thirza is a witch!”
The red cloak billowed as Thirza levitated off the ground and flew at Ethan. They collided at the edge of the sinkhole. Arcs of fire, so crimson they at times appeared magenta and violet, jumped from Thirza’s body into Ethan’s. He returned in kind, battering her skeletal head with blows from his dark tendrils.
“I must have Cora!” Thirza screeched. “I must consume her beauty! Her youth will sustain me!”
The rest of her flesh melted away as she expended her remaining magic on Ethan. She poured her wrath into him. Her unbridled selfishness, fermented over generations of leeching off the lives of others, climaxed in a tantrum of petulant fury.
Ethan burned. Chunks of his dark flesh were blasted away by the fiery onslaught, and it occurred to him that he could die here. Black tendrils melted and sizzled away—but the core of him was never touched. He moved, smiling as he did, not away from the assault but towards it.
“You’ve already doomed yourself,” he said. “Are you strong enough to take me down with you?”
Ethan seized Thirza by the arms and the wheeling fire spread from his body to hers. Her jaw opened inhumanly far to scream as her red shawl was set alight. She tried to pull away from her own burning shroud.
With the last of his strength, Ethan lifted Thirza over his head and hurled her away from him. They hit the ground at the same instant. Ethan only had time to watch Thirza collapse into a pile of charred bones before he blacked out.
Ethan’s eyes opened, met the full blast of the morning sun, and squeezed shut again. He rolled over, groaning at the pain that ran through his entire body, and realized he was in a bed. He sat up and opened his eyes one more time. A tiny room greeted him, with simple wooden furniture and white dust all over the floor.
He stood up and shuffled through the open front door. He was at the end of the village’s main road and the festival grounds were in sight. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he took in the scene around him.
Most of the people were cleaning up, probably with pounding headaches just like him. Some looked for clothes and blankets to cover themselves. A few were pointing at him and whispering. Other were looking at the pile of bones that still emitted black smoke.
“He saved us,” they said. “The stranger killed the witch.”
He found Asher at the sinkhole, measuring its length and width while the master mason chiseled away at a large, wedge-shaped stone. Two other men were using wood and rope to build a contraption that looked like a pulley. Cora sat nearby, her knees to her chest, guarded by her father. The fisherman caught Ethan’s eye and made his way over. Ethan met him halfway.
“I heard you saved my daughter,” the fisherman said. “And the whole village, it sounds like.” He smiled underneath eyes that were still red and watery. Then he held out his hand to shake. Ethan took it. The people cheered when they saw.
“The witch is no more!” they called to one another. “The beast of the island is dead!”
Ethan and the fisherman walked over to check on Cora. She stood when she saw Ethan and threw her arms around his shoulders.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re a hero.”
“No, I’m not,” Ethan answered. He walked over and clapped a hand on Asher’s shoulder. “Here’s your hero. Doing what he did took courage.”
Cora and Asher smiled at each other. Ethan took a step back, hoping to take advantage of their distraction and make his getaway.
“Hold on, mister.” Asher approached him. The young man’s eyes had dark circles underneath.
“That was your bed, wasn’t it?” Ethan asked.
“It sure was.”
“Did you get any sleep at all, Asher?”
“No, sir. There’s a lot of work to do. We have a lot of remains to get out of that cave for proper burial. And then we’re sealing this hole up for good.” Asher pointed at the stone being shaped by the mason. Then he got close enough to whisper. “The witch wasn’t the monster you’re looking for, was she?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Does that mean you’ll be moving on from here?”
“That’s right.”
“Can I convince you to stay a little while and rest? You handled the witch for sure, but she got her licks in.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good…”
Cora came to Asher’s side and put her hands around his arm. She favored Ethan with wide, vulnerable eyes. “Please?”
“Fine. One day.”
Asher smiled. “That’s great to hear, mister. There’s just one more thing I need to ask you for.”
“What?”
He pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Ethan. “Cora and I designed this. Well, she did most of the work,” he added after getting a gentle elbow to the ribs.
Ethan unfolded the paper. There was a sketch of a man with ruffled hair, wearing a jacket. Instead of hands, he had tentacles coming out of his sleeves. And he stood on a rectangular base.
“That’s me,” he said. “What is this?”
“It’s a statue,” said Cora. “Asher’s going to build it right over the sinkhole.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes we do.” Asher tapped the bottom of the drawing with a pencil. “I need to know what to put right there. Your name, mister.”
Ethan gave a sigh of resignation. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“Fine. My name is Ethan Clegg.”
“Thanks, mister.” Asher took the sketch back and walked off with Cora, hand in hand. Ethan watched them go, letting himself relax a little.
He spent the day with the villagers, patiently answering their questions about the witch, the cave, and the beast. He was steadfast in declining to answer any questions about himself or the dark form they had seen rescuing Cora from the sinkhole. He accepted all offers of food and drink and he insisted on paying until the villagers finally put their collective foot down and refused to take any more of his money. The village settled down by sunset and turned in early that night.
He left them on the next tide, unmooring his boat before dawn. He wanted to be gone before they had a chance to realize that their “hero” was himself a monster far more menacing than any village witch. If he sailed away, they’d be singing songs about him next harvest. But if he stayed the year, they’d be baying for his head on a stick next.
Ethan had learned all the ways of men over the years, even if he had never been one. Nor could he be a hero; a hero was a man who feared death but faced it. He didn’t qualify on either account. What he had wasn’t anything like courage—the only man who had shown that on this island was Asher.
He glanced back to the island as he made for the open sea. The shore was empty. No torches burned tonight. The villagers’ work was done for the day, but his would never be. He would keep traveling, keep hunting. Even so, he imagined a beautiful young face framed with baby’s breath and chestnut braids, sleeping in peace, no longer in fear.
He had purchased that peace with his own pain and that was not a bad thing. The weight of his own darkness lifted from his soul ever so slightly. Another thousand years of days like yesterday and he might be able to call himself something other than a monster.
There’s more to the story of Ethan and the Stranded Investigator. Dive into the found documents of Dr. John T. Parce to continue your journey.
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