It's been so long since I've talked to anyone so please forgive me if I babble, change the subject in mid-sentence, lose my train of thought, stop talking abruptly and just sit staring at you with an expression of horror, seem to forget you are even here...
You want to know, I suppose, what happened during that year ten.. fourteen? twelve? It's been so long I can't--twenty-three years ago? As long ago as that? My grasp on the passage of time is not what it was... when you are in the grasp of such residual terror, such lingering nightmares and shivering fits as come upon me in the night, as I am, the seasons and years all seem to run into each other. I suppose it doesn't help that I have not had a single night's unbroken sleep since those events about which you are so curious occurred.
Normally I would not be speaking of them at all. Normally... but these are not normal times, and I feel compelled to tell my story in the hopes that it will reach certain ears, and certain plans which I have heard of are not put into effect as I fear they will be, to this city's, and this world's detriment. And worse...
I think, though, that I am avoiding the subject after all. Speaking of these things is difficult for me. In fact, I have never spoken of them in full detail, as I plan to do tonight. I tried writing about them in my journal, but I have had little success. I will think that I have written paragraphs, only to find that instead I've been sitting rapt at my desk, staring into space in horror, the ink dried on my pen, after I have only managed to scribble a few words. Such as: "the spirit glass! What we saw within!" and "the door! That diabolical Door!" Pitiful, isn't it? My journal, after all these years, remains virtually empty, since I do little these days except stay indoors and try to lose myself in reading the lightest, trashiest of novels.
Well, I will force myself to begin. The wine you brought is warming, and has loosened my tongue I think. Yes. A vintage of Albanery? How perceptive of you, to know that this is one of the wines that would be most effective at loosening the bonds of years and terror in me. I will begin, I said, and I think that I will begin with that Door, that Door that was so "diabolical". It was, after all, after I went through that Door that the troubles began.
I was fresh out of university, having taken my degree at the usual age; I was no more or less clever than most of my peers, and had done well enough to have some citations appended to that document, and three letters of recommendation that were not short of glowing. I felt quite well about myself and the world as I boarded the steamer that would take me across the Sieve to Halling, that ancient and haunted island where my ancestors had occupied a vale in the Northern Uplands. A forbearer had made a name for themselves in coal products, which were once mined on our land in quantity, and had subsequently moved her branch of the family to Saskivirr on the Continent, and so I had rarely visited the family seat, as it was and is a rather arduous trip.
As you know, Halling is for the most part a pleasant and green island, with mild weather from the southern ocean currents. Only in the north part is it more like the rest of the world at that latitude, with harsher winters than the rest of the island. I had grown up in the high mountains of central Amvoin, so I did not find the prospect of enduring heavy snowfalls and the like daunting in the least. I planned to spend the space of a year in my ancestral home, going through our archives for records of the doings of certain of my forbearers during the early ages of our history. What that project was I cannot entirely say, because most of the memory of it has vanished from my mind, and apparently I left no record of what I planned to do, either at the school, or with friends, or anywhere. It seems I was rather secretive about my plans.
It was early Spring when I set off. The weather was extra rainy, as I recall, and colder than usual. The trip across the Sieve was, however, without incident, and I purchased passage on the train that would take me to what at the time was its northernmost point, Pentresil in the Northern Downs. I recalled from those long ago childhood visits that we would bargain for passage on a mail cart or cargo wagon.
But those visits had been in the summer, not the early spring when weather was still uncertain, especially in those climes. Patches of snow still lay about the town of Pentresil, which seemed shabbier and drearier than I remembered. It was probably the season and the weather: the sky was overcast, and there was little glimpse of new green in the winter-blackened boughs of the trees that lined the center of the streets in the main part of town.
I had some trouble finding anyone willing to go into the high Downs. The weather had been unusually bad that year, and there had been avalanches and landslips. But finally I found a fellow, a dour-faced farmer who was returning to his lands with a wagon of new feed for his pigs. His farm was some distance still from my goal, but I was young and fit and figured I could walk from there. The journey from town to the farm was not a comfortable one. It rained fitfully, and the clouds never parted, and it was chilly and damp, the hills blurred by dark mists and fogs. Thick woods grew on the hills the road--rutted and unpaved, no better than a track--wound though, and the bare twigs dripped drearily onto myself and the farmer as we huddled on the bench of the wagon, which was drawn by two stout cart-oxen.
We did not stop at nightfall. The farmer lit lanterns which he placed on either side of the wagon, and we continued on, the oxen, he told me, knowing the way. Eventually, as dawn began to make the clouds a slightly lighter shade of charcoal, the palings of a strangely high, close fence appeared. There was a gate in it, locked. "My place," the farmer grunted as we stopped. Then, to my surprise, he offered me a bite to eat. "It's a walk to your folks' place, I know it. You should have a bit of strength in you when you get there." At the time I thought it was a rather odd thing to say, but of course I accepted.
The farm was a big, old, somewhat shabby place, but seemed well-run and prosperous enough. The farmer had a partner, a quiet woman as old as he. She seemed somewhat fearful when he told here who I was and where I was heading, and piled my plate high with country bread and insisted I eat a full bowl of stew. It was simple food, but savory and filling, and I made good account of myself at their table. I don't have an appetite like that any more, not after that year! Sometimes I forget to eat...
At last I set out. Day was well up. "If it were night, you should have stayed over here," said the woman, to my surprise.
"Is there some trouble at night here?" I asked. These lands had never been known for bandits and the like, being wilder than those sorts really like. But she demurred.
"No, no, just the lands have gotten wilder since some folk have moved away." Apparently several families who farmed the region had pulled up stakes and left. This surprised me. Forested lands, of course, are not particularly fertile, but there were plenty of meadows and small dales well watered, and pigs liked the mast from the oaks and maples hereabouts. But perhaps the attractions of an easier life in the warmer south had become a draw. The famer and his partner did not know, or at least did not admit knowing, why the family had left. They were still there, after all.
I have heard since that the couple indeed abandoned their farm not long after I... returned. Indeed, it seems like that entire northern district of Halling is devoid of human residence now. Human residence... and so the Council has decided that a new settlement scheme is needed, so that the resources of those hills and uplands are once again brought into the use of the people. Madness! Those lands should be avoided at all costs!
But I am going ahead of myself. Well. I took leave of the farmer and his partner, and headed up the track that I could see headed off the main track to the farm, through the woods. At first my walk was not onerous, it was even pleasant, as the rain had stopped, and a watery sunlight occasionally came through the cloud cover, and the woods here were light ones of oak and maple. But then the path started to go uphill, and into a thicker, older forest. I was not familiar with this part of the countryside. I knew that south and east of our family seat was a dark, old wood that we were afraid of as children, and our elders never spoke of. They ignored it, in fact, as I recall, as if it were something not to be acknowledged. Around me the trees became less and less oaks and maples and more and more huge, dark evergreens. They closed over the path in some places, and it became almost as dark as evening under them. But I forced myself to keep walking, staying quiet and wary. At no point had I felt like singing or chanting or whistling or making any sort of happy walking noise, and I think that's why I was allowed to pass out of the woods unchallenged--though I am not sure to this day what I thought would challenge me.
Just when I thought I couldn't stand it any more, the path abruptly emerged out of the forest, into a wide, flat open bay in the hills. I could see, across the sort of upland plain I was on, a dark river winding through it, the path a gray-white scratch in the dead, brownish grasses leading to its banks, where a stone bridge crossed it. The path continued across a lawn to a hulking old house with eccentric wings sprawling out from the central bulk, almost as if they had grown from it, like the limbs of a gigantic beast, rather than be built. That house and river and bridge I knew, though I don't remember ever seeing them from this part of our land before. I told you, my family ignored the forest, feared it, stayed away from it! And now a sudden fear of what was behind me seized me, and I could not make myself look back, but instead began to walk very rapidly, forcing myself to not run, down the path towards the bridge. I did not breathe easy until I was on the other side of that bridge, and the cold gurgling the water made against its struts made me shiver.
I did not look back until I was at the house gates, which were simply two pillars of stone surmounted by our family sigil. The gate that had been there had been g0ne as long as I can remember, or perhaps there had never been a gate. I put my hand on the stone of the right hand pillar, and that reassuring solidity under my touch, looked back the way I came.
I saw the bridge, the river, the path, the meadow-bay, the wall of the forest. There was nothing amiss that I could see, though it was now heading towards evening and a mist was starting to form across the valley, obscuring the trees. I felt somewhat foolish, and headed up the path to the house.
In my day we had never used the main entrance of the house, a pair of huge doors (but not the Door I spoke of, we will come to that later) led to a huge, echoing, dark hall which was barely lit by tall, thin windows inset with glass squares colored red, blue, and amber. The floor of that hall was paved in stone flags, and old weapons--axes, halberds, spears, and the like, from Halling's less peaceful past were hung on the walls. There was a huge fireplace that was never lit. We never used that hall. It still seemed to echo with the old battle songs and pirate chants. My ancestors were not a pleasant people, I am afraid. Of course, we had become a peaceful family by then, respectable, and the hall was of no use to us. It was left to its shadows.
Instead, we always entered the home through the kitchen gardens on the south and west side. We would gather in the kitchen and the summer room off it, and occupied the sunnier western wing, and left the rest of the house to its dotage.
It's gone now, of course. That house that seemed like it had been built in the Age of Wandering, and would last forever. Not a stone of it remains on top of another. Just as well, perhaps... But they should have salted the land too. It will never make good farmland, I would not eat a fruit that grew from any tree there.
I made my way, well-remembering now, around the house to the kitchen wing. I did not expect to be met by anyone--old Bord was probably asleep by the stove, while Addla knitted, or perhaps slept too, in her chair by that same stove. I expected the place to look rather ragged, since winter had just passed and still seemed to cling to corners of this land, but I was eager to get inside and get some heated ale and an oatcake into me. However, it seemed to me that things looked more disheveled than they should be. Surely the bean stakes shouldn't be all scattered about like that, as if they had fallen in a storm and not been tucked away. And the low wall bordering the herb garden, now containing some blackened lumps of plantings, were missing many stones and had collapsed entirely in places. Hurd, Addla's son, should have at least piles the stones up to be replaced in the warm season. But perhaps the winter had been extra harsh here.
Then I reached the kitchen door, and I realized in full that something was not right here.
The door was fast closed, of course, but there was detritus built up against the bottom of it that had the look of being the product of more than one season. Here Addla had put some flowers in pots about, and I did see a couple pots, or their remains, smashed and scattered about. There were windows into the kitchen next to the door, but I could see that instead of the colorful embroidered coverings they had had inside, someone had instead boarded them up with wood. I tried the door, and the handle would not yield -- it was locked. The rattle of my trying the handle was loud in a silence that was increasingly ominous.
However, I did smell wood smoke. I took a few steps back to scan the roof, and could just make out a thread of smoke rising into the air. But it did not come from the kitchen chimney--it came from the chimney that the huge fireplace in the main hall used.
I was confused. Why was anyone using the main hall for any reason? It was cold and draughty, especially at that season. Had something happened in the kitchen-- a fire, or something--that made it unusable? Surely Bord, Addla, and Hurd would have simply moved into another part of the western wing, which was the warmest one. Addla, in fact, had been afraid of the main hall. There was a mystery here.
Well, I decided, I would simply go around to the front and go in the main way, and find out what was going on. I still fully expected to find the people who, in my mind, were as much a part of the house as its stones, still inhabiting the place. Just that previous year Bord had written my parents with his usual report on the upkeep of the house and grounds. Possibly he had written again with some report of trouble and the post had not reached us for some reason.
I walked back around the house the way I came, now noticing even more the strange signs of neglect--it could be called nothing else, winter had not caused those box hedges to overgrow that much, had not let the ivy start pulling apart the stones of the walls--that were all around. What was going on here?
to be continued
