The Curse of St Louis

Moonlight shone brightly on a backdrop of velvet, scattered with a sea of diamonds, brighter than the sleepy village of Ransop had witnessed in years. Thin wisps of cloud did little to obscure the vibrance of the disc as they sped by on icy winds. Down in the village, trees shifted uncomfortably under the touch of that fierce breath. After a quiet evening of card games, good food, and drinks, Ellen and Joseph gathered their outerwear and said fond farewells to their friends. Wrapped up, in a vain attempt to stave off the bitter fingers of frost, they pulled on hats, scarves, and gloves in the porch before they wandered onto the path. A carpet of silver lace stretched out ahead of them, like a fairytale kingdom, possessed by the magic of a winter queen. After only a few minutes, the sharp slivers of frost's fingers began to pinch at them, turning exposed flesh crimson. Ellen buried her face into the fleece fabric of her scarf, which muffled the sound of her voice. "God, I'm freezing. I'd forgotten how winter hits up here." Laughter erupted from Jo, who kept a steady pace at her side, "Don't tell me three years has turned you into a proper southerner, next you'll be putting the milk in first." His chuckle was warm against her ears despite sullied words. "I think you'll find, I've always been nesh, and it has nothing to do with my southern sojourn." Silent except for the echoes of their footfalls, they continued for another few minutes with Ellen renewing her attempts to burrow into not only the scarf but her coat as well. She glanced at Jo, his chin was held high as though the cold was as enjoyable as a chilled bath on a summer's day. "Jo, would you mind if we take the short route tonight? I don't think I can bear this for a second longer than I have to." Immediately, she regretted posing the question. Jo stopped dead in his tracks, forcing her to stand still long enough for the cold to claw its way into her shoes and nibble at the tipa of her toes. Hard eyes turned to her; "have you lost your mind? No. We don't go that way." "For God's sake! Are we really still ruled over by superstition and old wives' tales? It seems ridiculous to freeze for an extra 10 minutes when we can take a direct route!" Rather than responding, Jo pushed past Ellen and stormed ahead, agitation tightening every line of his body. Sighing loudly, she followed, jogging slightly to keep up with his long strides. "Oh, real mature, storming off like a toddler." "That's just it, isn't it. Little Miss University is too good for us, uneducated, country bumpkins." Hurt radiated from the centre of her chest, as though her breath was trapped and her heart ceased to beat. "Well, if that's how you feel." She dodged in front of him, ducking onto a path that was barely visible. "Ellen. No. Please, don't..." before the words had left his mouth, she had become invisible amongst the trees and bracken that had grown over the centuries. "Fuck." Tentatively, he stepped onto the bridleway and began to follow, afraid to leave her alone. No longer able to see the moonlight that had been blocked by the silent sentinels who had guarded the path, holding their silent vigil, he fumbled. Sharp needles of pine stabbing and scratching at him as he made precarious progress. Just ahead, he caught sight of her. She had had to slow her pace to avoid the snags of branches and grasping hedgerows, he didn't shout out, he didn't want to draw any attention to their presence. She may no longer believe in the dark tales that surrounded St Louis, but he did. He'd memorised every detail that surrounded the terrifying history and could not stop it as it played through his every thought. St Louis Church and grounds dated back to the 18th century, it was a monastery back then and, according to local historians, was the centre of all the town's activity. The monks and nuns who ran the place had been kind, caring, compassionate members of the community. Around the 1790s, things had begun to change in the church. Nuns and monks had become closeted, they stopped caring for the community and barricaded themselves behind the doors of the church. This is where the eerie rumours began. Residents reported that no-one left or entered the building. Questions arose about how they were getting food and supplies that no one could answer. According to the court registers and documentation of the era, a warrant was granted for the mayor, and a group of trusted people, described as 'pillars of the community', to enter the church. What they found inside was nothing short of horrifying. No member of the clergy had survived. Witnesses reported that the bodies had been shredded, what was left of each soul was indistinguishable from the next. In the doctor's statement, he claimed 'blood covered almost every surface, there was nowhere that had been left unsullied'. The magistrate's statement claimed that the mutilated organs of the residents had been strung across the altar like demonic bunting, decorating Christ's house in macabre desecration. They didn't declare the entirety of their findings to the community at the time, deeming them too horrific for the consumption of women and children. Instead they declared that a wild animal had got in and had killed the clergy, they reported to the church hierarchy and closed the doors on the whole situation. There wasn't much more from that fateful date, a few records alluded to new monks arriving over the following weeks to attend to the dead, but there was little information about that process. All mentions of St Louis disappear and a smaller, parish church, was erected at the far end of the village. As far away from the original as they could manage by the look of it. Only the cemetery had remained accessible, allowing residents to continue to pay their respects to lost loved ones. However, a string of disappearances in the early 1800s led to rumours to begin anew. Annie Stoppard, the magistrates youngest daughter, was the first to go missing. Her last known whereabouts was the cemetery. She had been sent by her mother to lay a bouquet of flowers on her grandmother's grave. When investigations began, they found the flowers, but not a single trace of Annie, it was as though she had just vanished. The chief investigator at the time assumed that Annie had a secret boyfriend and had eloped, but the family vehemently contested this. Seen as she was just the beginning, they were proved to be right. After Annie, six others went missing in a similar fashion over the following months. Mass hysteria took hold in the normally sleepy village of Ransop, fueled by the magistrate and his grief. Lucas Stoppard was a family man, and the loss cut him deeply. He took to drink in a vain attempt to numb the pain, but it quickly became a poison to him. In a fit of drunken rage, he confessed to what he had witnessed 25 years before. Every horrific detail, down to the location of organs, guts, and bone; he told his tale to anyone willing to listen. The mayor was left with no choice. He created a quarantine zone around the grounds, no one could walk within a mile of the church. Signs were posted to deter strangers, using deterrents such as plague or illness. Patrols ran the perimeter regularly, turning away any curious wanderers. As for Stoppard, he managed to convince the vast majority of people that the drink combined with the tragedy of losing his youngest daughter had sent him over the edge and these concoctions were the results of a complete nervous breakdown. People were sceptical, but no-one truly wanted to believe the magistrates story either. It worked. The mayor had averted the crisis. For two generations, people stayed away and there were no new abductions or mysteries to fuel the fires of hearsay and gossip. Ransop returned to its boring sleepy status, only whispers remained of the dark past of St Louis. It's strange and twisted past became a bedtime story to scare wayward children straight. That was until the case of Jimmy Callon. Over a century had passed, and the dangers of the church yard ebbed. New fears had crept into the hearts and minds of the residents of the quiet little English town. The monster of St Louis had become myth, fading into obscurity and pitiful in comparison to the impending bloodshed of 'The Great War'. Expecting to receive his conscription letter any day, Jimmy decided to allay his curiosity about the church. Like every other child in the village, he'd heard the stories and just wanted to look. To see what had every adult in the village whispering of demons and ghouls that would gobble up any child, woman or man who dared to step onto the sullied soil of the church grounds. Even though many had relegated the stories to legends, found reasonable explainations for the activities, they still kept to the outskirts and stayed off the grounds. Jimmy had to know what could cause an entire village to abandon such a glorious building, steeped in history. He told his younger brother that it might be his only chance, so many hadn't returned from where he was due to be summoned, his seventeenth birthday was meer weeks away. He had to know, before he possibly lost the opportunity forever. He took his chance early on Sunday evening, walked the crooked path with its silent guardians standing tall at each side, pushed aside the rusted iron awnings that miraculously still held the gate in place. There was no mystery as to what happened to Jimmy Callon. When he didn't return that evening, his brother, plagued with guilt and fear, told his father of Jimmy's plans. A search party was organised, men and dogs followed that same, fateful path, and found Jimmy. His body had been ripped into, intestines removed and then used to string him from the ancient yew that dominated inner circle of the church grounds. When they found him, blood still dripped into puddles at his feet, had barely begun to saturate the ground beneath him, and yet putrid smells of rot and decay permeated the area, causing men to wretch and dogs to run and cower. It was said that the howl of his father's grief could be heard in neighbouring villages. Friends and neighbours claimed that he moved like a wraith, tearing Jimmy away from the cursed grounds. Jimmy Callon. Son of James Callon. Uncle of Joseph Callon. Later, villagers and even family members had dismissed any connection to the church's history. Wrote the tragedy off as a serial killer, or a psychopath, perhaps someone suffering from shellshock, who had been wandering the quiet rural surrounds of Ransop to find the lost elements of their mind. Jimmy had just been in the worng place at the wrong time. It didn't stop them from preventing anyone from heading over there though, St Louis was still unhallowed ground to be avoided at all costs and renewed their motivation to keep the people out of there. Some speculated that perhaps there was some sort of unknown animal that haunted the grounds, the only person who stubbornly insisted that there was something darker at work here was Jimmy's father, the man who had witnessed that grusome scene. Joseph's grand-father. From his earliest memories, Joseph had sat on his grand-father's knee and been told his story. His version of that terrible night. What others had mistook for grief and desperation, he knew as frenzy. He had felt an inhuman pull that night, as though a curse had settled into his very bones. Later, the night terrors came for his grand-father, In the darkness, he often woke in a cold sweat, unable to get the smell of rotten flesh out of his nose, as though in the depths of night his soul was dragged back to that fateful place. He had made Joseph swear over and over that he would never enter those grounds, under any circumstance, convinced that one day, the thing that stalked his darkest nightmares was coming for him too, determined to wipe any trace of him from the face of the earth. Joseph remembered that promise as he followed at Ellen's heels, guilt dug at him, lashing him like a whip, scarcely allowing him a breath between beats. It had only been two years since James Callon had passed, an unexpected illness that doctors could not explain. One day, he woke from one of his episodes, that's what his nanna had called the nightmares, with black ooze frothing from his mouth and nose, obstructing his airways, slowly choking him. By the time an ambulance had arrived, he had gone. An autopsy had said that the fluid 'appeared' to be old blood, that he had hemmoraged in his sleep, but it was something that still nagged at Joe to this day, the vagueness of a logical profession, writing down possiblities and plausibilities rather than cold, hard facts. Then here he was, spitting on the promises he had made his whole life. A voice at the back of his mind begged him to stop. To turn around. To leave Ellen to her fate for her own scepticism and stupidity, but he couldn't. Stubborn and mule-headed as she was, Ellen was the love of his life. She had come back for him. He couldn't let her face this place alone. Almost as if she had read his mind, Ellen looked at him, something in his composure triggered her sympathy. She reached for his hand and whispered, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have stormed off." Anger and sorrow warred within him, he had let her take his hand, but couldn't bring himself to speak. Instead, he had taken to monitoring the ground around him. The boundary around the church left a fair distance before hitting church grounds, just in case anyone accidentally wandered off the beaten path, but the ground was changing now. Above the trees no longer stood straight, reaching for the sky, instead they appeared to lean, reaching for their neighbours, holding each other as though seeking comfort in each other's branches. The path itself became less packed earth and more loose stone. Small gritty stones that shifted underfoot as the two travellers trudged onwards. Jo turned back to Ellen, finally trusting himself to speak, "We can still turn back, we haven't hit the ground proper yet." She shook her head and even though the gloom prevented him from seeing her face, he knew that she had rolled her eyes. The same exasperation filled her voice. "It's just an old creepy building, Jo. We can't keep living in fear of it, and I'm not just talking about you. I'm talking about the whole town. Think of the potential that these grounds could have... This place is beautiful, we could really do something with this." His features twisted into a grimace, unsure where she saw beauty. A grim fog had started to seep up out of the gravel, probably due to some sort of underground well, and it carried with it an odour of mould and decay. As though something long dead was still in the throws of decomposing beneath them. There was certainly no beauty in that. As they rounded the next bend, twisted spires dominated the skyline, hiding the night's true beauty from view, blanketing the way in darkness. The architecture must have been something to behold in its heyday, but now the decorative cornices crumbled, leaving hollow gashes across the face of it. Cracks and fissures marred bricks and cornerstones, allowing ivy and moss to thrive in damp, weeping, crevices, like infected wounds, streaking up through the building. Even at a distance, it formed a malicious blemish on the landscape. No amount of decorative awnings or skilled architecture could detract from the waves of venom it emitted. Fog misted before them, climbing higher with every step forward they took, their breathing became laboured under the heavy eyes of the scarred building. Joseph hesitated as they approached the wall that guarded the perimeter. Bracing himself, he began to plot the direction they would need to travel the grounds in order to take the quickest route home. Although he had never set foot on premise, he knew where the rough hewn path opposite their house would meet the one they currently trod. Ahead, he could just make out the outline of wrought iron bars that had to make up the entrance. Suddenly, it dawned on him that Ellen's steps hadn't faltered. The girl who could get lost in a well lit shopping centre, with maps at every cross section, was walking as surely and soundly as she would in their own living room, despite the darkness and encroaching fog. "So how many times have you taken this short cut before tonight?' To her credit, she didn't stutter or attempt to deny her familiarity with the route. "I've been taking this route since we first started going out. Your house was literally the other end of town from me, you know how I hate walking to and from anywhere." "Really? You walked this route, on your own, for two years before heading off to uni?" Even muffled by the thickening fog, her sigh echoed in his ears, "look, I know your family has a deeply personal reason to avoid this place, I get it, especially your dad, but me, Dez, Danny and Jenna explored here quite a lot as teens. You know how the rumours fascinated us, and none of us were local, so to speak ... it's just that none of us ever dared tell you. Even as arrogant teenagers, we didn't want to dig into that wound." It was difficult to conceal the hurt he felt at her words, the truth that echoed in them, there had always been something that they kept from him. Yet, he couldn't help the curiosity that awoke either, stirring like a sleeping bear coming to after a long winter. "Well, now I know... So, you never saw anything then? I'm assuming not, or you wouldn't be dragging me out here now." They had reached the gate, Ellen stretched out a gloved hand, gently nudging the gate open. In spite of the delicate touch, the rusted iron still let out a shrill squeal that pierced Jo's ear drums. He felt his features scrunch, the sound setting his teeth on edge. "No. We never saw anything strange. We made up stories about it, tried to freak each other out, but there was no truth in it." After a short pause, she added, "we tried to get into the church once though. That's a different story, that thing should be pulled down." At the mention of it, his eyes moved of their own accord, reluctantly coming to rest on the mangled structure, its eyeless stare oozing animosity at the trespassers. Ellen's soothing whisper snapped him back to her. "Don't worry, the path skirts us around the edge, through the cemetery, we don't go near it." Luckily, the fog seemed to have settled, no longer did it make an attempt to claw at their eyes, instead it drifted peacefully, swirling in eddies around their knees. Once they crested the small hill that indicated they had hit the graveyard, and they were out of the long shadows cast by St Louis, moonlight flooded the landscape. Its silver glow illuminated the fog, providing them with enough light that they wouldn't accidentally stumble into a gravestone. The eerie radiance created a sense of surrealism, it left Jo in awe, as though he had been denied access to a magical land his whole life and was only now realising how much he had been robbed. "It really is beautiful, isn't it?" Just then, as though summoned by the dulcet tones of his voice, a low growl emanated from nowhere and everywhere all at once. He hadn't really felt the cold before, but as the sound radiated through him, he felt chilled fingers scratch down his spine. Every hair on his body stood erect and he finally felt the weight of his grandfathers word settle on his shoulders, "Run!" he breathed. Urgent. Desperate. Ellen didn't move. She just stood. Rooted to the spot. Sharp rasping sounds accompanied the growl that ebbed to a persistent rumble, like a wild animal that had caught sight of it's prey. Jo sensed as it squatted, knowing it was preparing to pounce. Grabbing Ellen, he launched himself into a sprint, and dashed between graves and monuments. Ellen flying along in his wake. Heart pounding, he made for the clearing that he thought would mark the path out. Instinctively, he knew this was his only route to safety. Just as he had known that the thing in there with them was a hunter, ancient, knowing and out for blood. He understood the word curse now, truly. The weight he felt, it was like he had steel manacles around his ankles and carried bricks on his back. Home. It was a straight path now. Just a few yards to go. Abruptly, he lost his grip on Ellen's hand. She let out a small squawk as she went tumbling into the fog. Jo didn't get a chance to go back for her. At the same instant, the ground in front of him erupted in a fountain of muck and sludge, showering him in filth. Pain radiated from his gut as he came face to face with the same creature that had stalked the nightmares of Ransop for hundreds of years. He tasted iron. Felt warm fluid fill his mouth and foam on his chin. His vision swam. His senses numbed. Only pain was left to him. There was only the blur of tooth and fang, caked in crimson, before darkness ensued, dragging him down, down into its cold embrace.