Young Writers Society

On a pale dawn, as the streetlights sputtered dark and the sun-- Behind heaving grey clouds-- began to mount the horizon, the town of Ardferven was still. Curtains drawn, roads empty, breaths even and eyes shut. Boughs swayed and slouched, grass bristled with dew, and the sky weighed above like a globe of clouded glass. The people slept.

Except, of course, for two.

Some-ways outside the small town, a car came to its lurching halt. The door swung open, admitting a man who could be charitably described as middle aged. He remained stony-faced as he surveyed the field, then glanced sidelong at the woman already standing a few paces away.

“You woke me up at all hours to see a field?” He asked, elbows propped against the hood of the car.

She herself was leaning over the fence that bordered the field. Her eyes were sunken and ringed, and her hands were knotted together.

“As much as I’d like to say it’s more complicated than that, it isn’t.” she sighed. “And good morning to yourself, too”, she added dryly.

He raised an eyebrow, but otherwise, his face kept impassive. “So then”, he said, “As impressive as this is, you did say it was urgent. I usually don’t go about my business until--”

“Alright, give me a moment to explain, would you? It’s-- well, I don’t really understand it myself”. She indicated helplessly towards the field.

“You see out there? Where the crops just...stop? That didn’t exist yesterday, Isaac.”

For a moment, Isaac didn’t respond. Then, he sighed slowly, withdrawing a cigarette from his pocket and sparking it. “Explain”, he murmured from the corner of his mouth, seemingly occupied entirely by lighting the thing.

“Farmer Johnson down the road-- You know him, don’t you? He called me this morning, said there was land here that just. Wasn’t, before now. I came to see it myself and… the next town over, Isaac, it used to be five kilometres away. Now it’s ten.”

She glanced at him distastefully as he blew a small gust of smoke. She waited patiently for a minute as he gazed out across the field. Then impatiently for another.

“Well?” She finally burst, gesturing wildly into the field. “What do you have to say about it? You said you knew all about… happenings like this. Unnatural things”.

He nodded. “Well, that's something. I wasn’t expecting work this early in the week.” He sighed, making for his car. “You tell the farmer to stay away-- And don’t let anyone else catch word of it”.

“What? You can’t leave yet!” She caught the car door quickly, wedging it open. “H-he’s already gone out there, said he was-- Well I don’t know what he said, prospecting or something”.

He chewed his cigarette thoughtfully at that. “Well”, he said, turning the key, “That’s a shame. Nothing I can do to save him now then.”

“What? What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Knowing these cases, he’s probably gone mad, if he hasn’t been… well who knows, really. Eaten, buried-- My business isn’t an exact science.”

The car began slowly moving. The woman quickly piled into the passenger seat, leaving the door swinging behind her.

“What are you talking about?”

The man continued to drive, heading back towards the town. They began driving past the field that shouldn’t have existed.

“You know, I’m really not fond of people trying to make sense of my work.” He said, one hand on the wheel. “Or leaping into my cars”, He added.

“What do you mean mad-- I-- I didn’t hire you to talk nonsense. I hired you to sort out all of the oddness around here”.

“I don’t have time to explain my work, I hardly have to time to do it nowadays. Besides, I doubt I could explain it even if I did want someone like you muscling in on my work.” He kept his eyes steadily ahead, cigarette dangling from the window. “Now then”, he continued, “Since you’ve been insisting on following me around while I’m doing my work, you’ll listen. I don’t even want you to think about that field. Not about where it came from or how it could exist. Even that could be enough for you to start losing it. You just focus on what I tell you to do, which will namely be keeping out of my business. I told you this when you hired me-- Believe me when I say you’re not the only one who needs my expertise”.

There was a long moment of silence.

“And the farmer?”

Isaac shrugged. “It is what it is. If he’s extraordinarily lucky, he may just come out of it with his mind mostly intact, which is more than most can say”.

The woman settled back into the seat glumly, gazing out at the unremarkable-- But at the same time bizarre-- landscape. Her gaze wandered around the car itself, littered with various trinkets. There, a wooden carving lined with jagged runes. In the back, a display cabinet filled with what looked to be glass beads. A rosary hung from the windshield.

They soon reached the town, sloping streets of peeling plaster and crumbling cobbled roadways rising on all sides.

A bell tolled.

The woman frowned, glancing upwards towards the centre of the town. There, the brassy bell swung at the height of a Church belfry.

“The bells? It’s only six, they-- They don’t start till ten!” She flicked the radio on, the digital clock flickering on. It read 2 am. “Damned thing’s broken”, she muttered. Isaac continued driving.

As they progressed onwards, the oddities continued. In one place, two houses seemed to have simply been smashed together, as if by the clumsy hands of some immature deity. In places, grand oaks lay on their side, withered and decayed where they had been healthy just that morning. Roads seemed longer, or short, and where some streets were packed together and ground to rubble, others had great swathes of land between them that hadn’t existed before. Strangely, the woman didn’t remark on this-- Neither did the townsfolk, who wandered the streets seemingly oblivious. She frowned slightly-- Something was wrong, she knew that-- but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what. It was as though every time she tried to think about the strangely warping time and distance, it trickled through her fingers, dancing out of sight. Like a shadow in her peripheral, it was very much there, but at the same time intangible.

In places where the land had extended, some of the townsfolk wandered, muttering softly to themselves. Others stared gormlessly at their ruined houses, lips moving soundlessly, eyes glazed over. On Isaac, eyes straight ahead and very pointedly not looking at these oddities, seemed to remain normal.

“Sarah”, Isaac murmured, pulling up into one of the alleyways untouched by the strange oddness inflicting the town. He glanced over at her, found her eyes glazed, face pressed up against the window, and sighed. He rummaged in the back of the car, withdrawing a small compass, and pressing it into her hand.

She glanced down dreamily. Suddenly, her eyes snapped back into focus, and she glanced frantically around. “W-what happened? What's The town! Why was I…” she pressed a hand to her temple, frowning.

“I told you not to think about the town… not to think about what’s happening to it” Isaac growled. “If it happens again, look at the compass-- It gives you a something grounded in reality.”

“But what’s happening? How is-- How is this…?”

Isaac had already left the car and was making towards a small door set into the alleyway. Sarah recognised it as the housing she had organised from him when she had called him to the town. It was a dreary place in the back of a bar storeroom. She’d call it one of the seedier sections of the town, but given that the town was so small, it was the only seedy section. He hadn’t seemed to mind so much-- He just needed room, he said.

“Think of it as a mass illusion” Isaac explained, leading her into the room. “My business, it deals with strange things, unnatural things. Things that you can’t put into words, that get inside your head. Well, they all have different ways of driving people mad, these oddities. This one happens to do it by making folks lose their sense of time and space”.

“Are you saying this isn’t real?”

Isaac’s only response was a middling gesture with his hand. As he lead her into the room, she saw that not an inch of it had gone to waste. The place was packed with similar assortments of trinkets and the like that she had seen in the car. A stone tablet engraved with a table of symbols, a blank painting, a dozen clocks set to different times. And most of all, books-- Heaving piles of the things, in fact.

“Now then” Isaac murmured, seemingly to himself, “We’ll have to be quick if we want anyone coming out of this… well, sane. I might get some use out of you yet.”

Sarah had simply made herself a seat on one of the many stacks of books, and was presently clasping and unclasping her hands. “This is… quite a bit to take in, you know. When I hired you I thought you’d… well, I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“You’re lucky you hired me when you did, this place is quite far gone. I’ve never had a surge just a week into a job”, Isaac said, back turned as he dug through a stack of mechanical devices.

“A what?”

“Nothing, nothing. Now listen, if you insist on coming, you do exactly what I say. I don’t need that on my conscience. Assuming you don’t want to risk your sanity, I suggest you drive as far away from here as possible and never think about this day again. If you even start trying to think about it, you’ll make trouble elsewhere.”

“I… still don’t entirely understand what’s happening. I don’t know if I could stop thinking about it-- I know I don’t want this happening elsewhere.” She breathed deeply. “What can we do to fix it”.

Isaac nodded to himself, straightening, and meeting her gaze. Under his arm, he held what seemed to be half a dozen clocks.

“We’re going to catch a God.”

Thanks for reading!

I'm not necessarily sure if I'll continue with this. I decided to throw it out in its first draft, as an experimental piece. Some intrigue, some plot and a healthy dose of Lovecraftian Horror. I'm happy to see where it goes, though, so for now, rip it to shreds.