Dark Season: The Complete Box Set (148 page)

Chapter Two

1925.

Lawrence was a good boy. Really, Lord, he was. Such a good boy, which makes whole this business all the more unpleasant and regrettable. He might have made a few mistakes under pressure, but in general he was a good, honest boy who had time and a happy smile for everyone. His one flaw was the ladies. Oh, how Lawrence's head could be turned by a pretty girl. I understand how the temptation of the flesh can turn a man's head, Lord, but for Lawrence it was almost impossible to ignore the arrival of a new woman in town. He'd become besotted, some might even say obsessed. I know he tried to fight his urges, and I know he prayed and prayed to you until his knees were sore, but something in that boy was unable to summon up the necessary strength. And so he sinned.

May the Lord have mercy on his soul.

"Mayor Caster?" calls out a meek voice at the door, accompanied by a faint knock. "May I enter?"

Opening my eyes, I sit up straight and pause for a moment to compose myself. "Come in, Adelaide," I say eventually.

"Good afternoon, Mayor Caster," Adelaide says as she steps into the room. A quiet, mousy woman of late middle age, Adelaide is so timid she can barely even make eye contact with me. I believe it must be my masculinity that frightens her; it's understandable, really, that such a delicate woman would be overcome by my strong, powerful presence. "I was asked to tell you that a man has arrived at the hotel and has been asking after you," she continues. "Henry said you ought to know."

"A man?" I say, frowning.

She nods, glancing briefly at me before looking back down at the floor. "He arrived this morning. A tall man, wearing black. He told Henry he plans to come and introduce himself to you later today, and Henry thought you really should be forewarned. Henry thinks there's something unsettling about the man."

I take a deep breath. "Henry should be careful when judging others," I tell her. "After all, Henry is certainly not without his own flaws."

"Yes," she says quickly.

"Tell me, has this man done anything to offend anyone?"

"No," she says.

"Has he said anything untoward or ungodly?"

"I don't believe so," she says.

"Is there something objectionable about his character, or about his business? Does he smell bad?"

She shakes her head.

"Then what business does Henry have in condemning this man?" I wait for Adelaide to answer, even though I know she won't say anything. I don't know if she has the mental fortitude to form opinions of her own; if she does, she keeps them to herself. "Henry should focus on his own business before he starts criticizing the lives of others. I'm sure the stranger would be more than capable of finding my office without help, but perhaps on this occasion I shall make an effort to come and seek him out myself." Rising from my chair, I walk slowly over to the door and take my walking cane from the rack. "Come and show me this man," I tell Adelaide, "but first, will you join me in a prayer for poor Lawrence?"

"Poor..." she starts to say, looking puzzled. "Of course."

"Kneel," I tell her.

Slowly getting down on her knees, Adelaide clasps her hands before her face and closes her eyes.

"Dear Lord," I begin, "we beg your mercy for the soul of our dear comrade Lawrence Evans, that he might be forgiven by his fellow men. We implore you to give him the strength necessary to face his current struggles, and we ask that you give us the same strength and enable us to ignore the pleasures of the flesh. Amen."

"Amen," Adelaide whispers.

"Now get up," I say. "I'm a busy man."

Having dressed for the street in my finest fur coat, I lead Adelaide out of the building and pause to take a long, deep breath of air. It's a slow day in Devil's Briar, with just a few of the townspeople going about their business. The shops are all open, though, and the commerce of the town seems to be rumbling along at an acceptable pace. Striking out across the wide, open square toward the hotel, I greet several passersby and - in turn - I am greeted warmly. It has taken me some years to establish myself as Mayor of Devil's Briar, but in that time I have earned the respect of most of my fellow citizens. Whenever I am out and about on official business, I feel that I am doing good work. In these troubled times, when people worry about sin and evil, I have the added responsibility of providing guidance and moral authority. Fortunately, these needs fall within my natural abilities.

"Good morning, Henry," I say as I enter the foyer of the hotel, with Adelaide scuttling along behind me. "I understand we have a visitor in our midst."

"We do indeed," Henry replies sourly. Standing behind the reception desk, he makes little effort to disguise his discomfort. "The gentleman is through in the bar at this very moment."

"In the bar?" I reply, a little shocked. "I do hope he is not -"

"Of course not," Henry says with a calculated smile. "He is merely taking tea with his companion."

"He has a companion?" I ask.

Henry nods.

"You didn't tell me about a companion," I say, turning to Adelaide.

"I wasn't aware of any companion," she replies, looking scared. "I'm sorry, I didn't know!"

I sigh. "You must ensure you have all the facts before you come tittle-tattling to me in future. Otherwise, you risk setting me up to look like a fool, and you wouldn't want that, would you?"

She shakes her head.

"Very well," I say. "You can go on your way." Turning, I walk toward the bar, pausing at the door to ensure that my tie is straight. It's a rare pleasure to welcome visitors to Devil's Briar, and I feel it's my duty to greet every new arrival personally, no matter how brief their time here with us might be. I consider myself to be the public face of the community, and I hope to set the tone and ensure that outsiders not only feel welcomed, but also understand that they are to treat our little town with the respect and courtesy that we deserve. Finally, taking a deep breath, I walk through the door and enter the bar, which is empty apart from a figure sitting over by the window.

"Good morning!" I say, grinning as I approach the visitor. "My name is Albert Caster, Mayor of Devil's Briar. I most humbly welcome you to our little town!"

"Good morning, Mayor Caster," says the man, getting to his feet and extending a hand. He's a fairly young fellow, perhaps in his early thirties, with dark, brooding eyes but an easy smile. He's well-dressed, and he has about him the air of someone who has a considerable fortune. He is, I imagine, the kind of man who might appeal to the ladies. "My name is Thomas Paternoster," he continues, "and I must apologize for not having come at once to introduce myself to you in person at your office. I'm afraid I was quite exhausted after the long journey, and I felt the need to refresh myself before imposing upon your time. I hope you'll understand."

"Please," I say, shaking his hand, "don't apologize."

"Will you join me?" he asks, indicating an empty chair.

"I would be honored," I reply, taking a seat just as Henry enters the bar. "Bring me a tea," I say, and Henry heads through to the kitchen. I carefully lean my walking cane against the wall. "I believe," I say, smiling at Mr. Paternoster, "that I was told you have a companion with you?"

"Yes," he says. "A young lady. My niece, in fact. She lost her parents in a fire when she was younger, and I have been looking after her ever since. She's a lovely girl, very obedient. Very God-fearing, and very intelligent. She's currently up in my room, unpacking my belongings, but she'll be down shortly and I'm sure you'll be charmed by her. I'm afraid she's the type of girl who always manages to attract the attention of gentlemen. Through no fault of her own, it can be quite a struggle ensuring that she remains chaste until I can find her a suitable husband."

"I'm sure," I reply. "Might I ask what business has brought you to our fair town?"

"A matter of some delicacy," he says, sipping from his tea. "In fact, I was hoping to get a moment with you this afternoon in order to discuss a matter of great importance."

"I should be only too happy to listen to anything you have to say," I reply, as Henry brings over a pot of tea and sets it in front of me, along with a cup. I wait until he has left the room before I continue speaking. "I run a very informal office, Mr. Paternoster. Some men prefer formality, but I find it stiffens the soul. I prefer to speak freely, and I like others to tell me what's on their mind. I trust you'll find I'm a most amenable -"

"Devil's Briar is dying," Mr. Paternoster says suddenly.

I stare at him. "I beg your pardon?" I say after a moment.

"It was evident from the moment I arrived," he continues. "The whole town is in a terminal decline. You have no industry, you have no trade routes, no reason to exist at all. Forgive me for being frank, Mayor Caster, but how much longer do you foresee Devil's Briar remaining a viable community? Ten, perhaps fifteen years?" He sips from his tea. "As I walked from the edge of town to this hotel, I passed twenty-seven people in the street, and not one of them had any vitality. It was like seeing dead-eyed corpses wandering from door to door. Few of the people I saw were young, and few had any passion in their eyes. Devil's Briar has the unstirred atmosphere of a ghost town. It's as if the people here have given up on life."

Taking a deep breath, I attempt to compose myself. "I'm always glad to hear the opinions of -"

"I'm not finished," he says, interrupting me. There's a steely, determined look in his eyes. "Something needs to be done if Devil's Briar is to be saved. Some new strength needs to be introduced, or else the town will die out and end up being forgotten. I'm sure you don't want to be remembered as the man who presided over the death of an entire community, but that is precisely what will happen unless something changes." He sighs. "This is in no way intended as a criticism of your own work, Mayor Caster. I'm quite certain that you execute your duties with aplomb. Nevertheless, the problem is as plain as day. I have a little medical training, and I can assure you that if I saw a patient with the same kind of malaise that I see in this town, I would immediately recommend some form of tonic."

"You have a slightly skewed picture of our little community," I say, bristling at this man's importunity. "Perhaps, having only been here a scant hour already, you have mistaken rigor for sterility, and confidence for listlessness. We are not the kind of people who show our emotions on our sleeves, Mr. Paternoster. We are a reserved community. We are a God-fearing people."

"And yet you have but one small church that looks, if I may be so bold, as if it might fall down in a stiff breeze. How can a God-fearing people have any faith in themselves when their community shows no desire to glorify our creator? If the people of Devil's Briar fail to demonstrate their devotion to God, how can they expect that God in turn will share his magnificence with them? No wonder the town is in such a state of disrepair."

I pause for a moment, trying to understand this Paternoster fellow. "Might I ask why you came to our town in the first place?" I ask eventually. "It seems most unusual for a man to present himself in an unfamiliar community and immediately begin to criticize what he finds. I always feel it is incumbent upon the new arrival to observe the ways of his new environs and seek to fit in accordingly."

"Which is why I wish to speak to you," he replies. "I hope to remain in Devil's Briar for some time. Victoria requires stability, and I am tired of traveling. But if I am to stay, I wish to contribute something meaningful and valuable to the town." He smiles. "I have money, Mayor Caster, and I wish to use some of it to put right what I believe is wrong. I hope, with your blessing of course, to contribute both materially and spiritually to the regeneration of Devil's Briar."

"And how do you propose to do that?" I ask.

"With metal," he says firmly, "and steel."

"Well," I start to say, "If you -" At that moment, a terrible scream is heard from outside. Getting to my feet and grabbing my walking cane, I hurry as fast as I can through to the lobby, where I find the front door hanging wide open. There's a commotion outside, with people huddling around what appears to be a body on the ground. Seeing me in the doorway, Henry hurries over.

"What's wrong?" I ask. "What's causing all this excitement?"

"It's Lawrence Evans," Henry says, with a look of horror in his eyes. "He's struck Adelaide down. It's happening again, Albert. I told you nothing had changed! Why didn't you listen to me?"

Chapter Three

Today.

"Look at this place," Bill says as we walk along the main street of Devil's Briar. "It's like a time capsule. A perfectly preserved town from the 1920s, abandoned by man and left to sit and rot. A whole community of shops and houses. There must have been hundreds of people living here, but..." He turns to me. "Where did they all go? And why didn't one person ever mention this place after they left?"

I shrug. Devil's Briar is certainly a striking discovery. It's a small town, made up of maybe a dozen roads interlinked in a grid formation. The buildings are primitive but were probably, back in the early twentieth century, considered to be fairly modern. There are quite a few shops, suggesting that the place supported a small but thriving community. So far, walking along what seems to have been the main thoroughfare, I've seen a bank, two saloons, a library and various small stores. This wasn't a bunch of hicks living in the sticks; Devil's Briar was clearly a proper, fully-functioning town, in which case... What went wrong?

Stepping over to one of the buildings, I peer through the large window and see nothing but darkness inside. I squint, in an attempt to get a better view, but it's hopeless: the window is covered in thick grime, accumulated no doubt over many, many years of abandonment. I try the door and find that it's locked, with a hand-written sign indicating that this particular store - which seems to have sold fabric - is only open on weekdays from 9am until 5pm. It's strange to think that at one time, this place must have been fairly busy and normal. This is a far, far more substantial conurbation than the satellite images suggested, and I've got to hand it to Bill: he was right when he said it would be worth coming out here.

"Seriously," he says, standing in the middle of the street. "What happened here? Why did everyone abandon the town? Why was the whole place scrubbed from all the history books? You'd think someone would have at least mentioned that Devil's Briar exists."

"Unless they just wanted to forget about it," I point out. "Maybe they left because they thought there was nothing to keep them here. No jobs, no industry. Nothing. I mean, if you moved to New York from a place like this, you wouldn't spend all your time writing about the past, would you?"

"That's assuming they
did
leave," Bill replies.

"Then where are they?" I ask.

He shrugs. "Maybe they just died off. I know you're not keen on dead bodies, Paula, but you've got to accept that there might be some unburied remains here. Maybe something happened that prevented anyone from leaving. Maybe everyone died."

"Like a plague?"

"Who knows? It's not impossible that the population dwindled and was then struck down by some kind of catastrophe that finished the last citizens off."

"Aren't you being a little melodramatic?" I ask, walking along to the next shopfront and peering inside. This time I can just about make out what appears to be a counter, with some kind of shelving behind it. After a moment, I realize that I'm looking at a pharmacy, and one that seems to be fully stocked and ready to open. This place wasn't emptied out when its owner left; it's as if they just shut the door and vanished. "If anything interesting had happened here," I continue, trying the door and finding that it's locked, "we'd know about it. The only reason a whole town would fade from the history books is if it's so dull, no-one can even be bothered to remember it existed in the first place. Ergo, they all left."

"Or they were too scared," he replies. "Or no-one ever got away from the place."

"Sure," I reply. "A great big, dusty, empty mystery."

"I think something really strange happened here," he continues. "Something really unusual."

"You can't be serious," I say. "You're starting to sound like a conspiracy nut. This place is weird enough, without us having to come up with complex theories about why it ended up being abandoned. There are plenty of examples of ghost towns in the Old West that were abandoned because the community became economically and socially nonviable. Just because this place looks to have been more advanced, you can't ignore the most likely explanation."

"Are you trying to spoil my fun?" he asks, pulling a camera from his pocket and hitting the 'record' button. "There's no way an entire town gets abandoned like this, without there being some kind of story behind what happened. The fact that there's absolutely no mention of the place on record only proves that the story must be worth uncovering." He pans the camera around in a full circle. "Then again," he adds, lowering the camera, "there's something else that's odd about this Devil's Briar."

"Like what?" I ask.

"It's not just humans who left," he replies. "It's everything. Listen. There's nothing here. No sign of any kind of animal life. No birds. No bugs, as far as I can tell. It's as if every living thing headed for the exit and then stayed out. There's no life here at all."

"Well maybe there is," I point out. "Maybe we should take a look in one of these buildings before we head home."

"Head home?" he says, looking surprised. "Who said anything about heading home? No way. We've got supplies for a week, and that's how long we're gonna spend here."

"You've got to be kidding," I reply.

He doesn't say anything.

"Bill," I continue, "what are we going to do here for a
week
? We need to go and get a team together, and come back here properly."

"We'll do all that," he says, "but first we'll poke around a little ourselves." He stares at me. "Come on, look at this place. We've stumbled into something truly amazing. Is your first instinct really to turn around and go home? Do you think Howard Carter, when he found Tutankhamun's tomb, turned around and said he wanted to go home and think about what to do next? Hell, no. He broke down the damn door and went inside."

"And look how that turned out," I reply.

He frowns.

"So now you're comparing Devil's Briar to the tomb of Tutankhamun?" I ask with a sigh. I look along the dusty street. "Where, exactly, do you think we could sleep?"

"There must be beds somewhere," he replies.

"No way!" I reply, hurrying after him as he starts walking. "You can't seriously expect us to sleep in a ghost town, Bill. It's..."

"It's what?" He turns to me, grinning. "Spooky? Creepy? Scary? I never knew you were so superstitious."

"I'm not superstitious," I say. "It's just... There's a limit. This place? At night? Do you really want to give that a try?"

"There's nothing here that can hurt us," he replies. "What are you scared of? Ghosts? Bumps in the night? Look around, Paula. There's literally
nothing
in this whole place."

"You don't know that for sure," I tell him. "There could be people here. Maybe they're hiding. Maybe there are bears."

"There's no sign of any kind of life," he replies. "You saw the road. No tire tracks. No-one has been in or out of this place for ages, and it's quite clear that no-one walks these streets." He pauses. "I tell you what. I'll cut you a deal. If you find one sign of life here before sunset - just one sign - I'll agree to turn around and get out of here. How's that for a promise?"

"I don't want to stay here overnight," I insist. "It just doesn't feel like a good idea."

"Hey!" he calls out, stopping as he reaches the point where the street intersects with another thoroughfare. "Come and take a look at this!"

"What is it?" I ask as I walk over to join him. "Is there -" Suddenly I stop speaking as I see what he's looking at. It takes a moment for me to register quite what I'm seeing, as if somehow my brain can't compute such a bizarre object. "No way," I say.

"Way," he replies, stepping forward. "How could something like this be here, and still no-one thought to ever mention this town after it got abandoned?" He turns to me. "Explain that to me, Paula. Explain how this place got forgotten, and I'll turn around right now and leave with you. Explain what we're looking at right now."

I take a deep breath. Ahead of us, about fifty meters away down at the other end of the street, at the center of what appears to be a small town square, there's a cross embedded in the ground. A huge black cross, defiantly rising up maybe thirty or forty feet into the air.