A talk with the couple

So I had a talk with the couple I’m staying with.  A nice little conversation.  We told each other about ourselves, our lives, etc.  I learned quite a lot about them.  I’m not going to go into that here, though, just to protect their privacy.  After all, this is my blog, not theirs.  It’s just a bit rude to leak information about people onto the internet.

Anyway, nothing really stood out too much.  There was just one thing.  I mentioned the walk I took outside to them, and they suddenly got…well, their faces changed some.  They grew quiet.

“You should have told us sooner,” the old man said quietly.  “You shouldn’t have gone out there that late.”

I was a bit confused.  “Why not?” I asked.  “Is there some sort of law?”

The old woman shook her head.  “No…no law.  If there were a law, the police would be the least of your worries.”

“There are dangerous things out there,” the old man said.  “Dangerous things that come out late at night.  Once it grows dark, it’s not safe out anymore.  The events that occur after dark are downright unnatural.”

I chuckled.  “What sort of events?”

The woman shook her head.  “Ghastly stuff.  Boy…do you know the legend of Bartholomew?”  I told her that I hadn’t, so she told me the story.

“Well, this area used to be a bit more populated.  It was still a small community, but we were a tight one.”  Incidentally, this was back in the days before they had electricity out here.  Quite a while ago.  “Things were good.  We all pitched it to help each other out.  But then…well, strange things started happening.”

“People started dying,” the old man cut in.  “We’d find them outside in the cold morning air.  But it wasn’t a natural death.  Oh, no.  It was always some sort of bloody, grizzly murder.  Some we recognized as axe wounds.  Other times, it looked like the victim had been gored by some sharp object.  And still other times, they were brutally mangled, with broken bones and twisted bodies, as if some beast had trampled all over them.”

“It was terrible,” the old woman said as she buried her face in her hands with a sob.

“Anyway,” the man continued, we all decided that we would figure out what was causing this.  So we went to investigate.  We armed ourselves best we could with muskets and farm equipment, and went out to see if we could find this murderer.

“Twenty of us went out there,” he said quietly.  “Only five of us returned.”

“What happened?” I asked.  But the man remained silent, staring off into space.  Whatever it was, he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.  He was lost in the past.  I excused myself after about a minute of just sitting there, and then sat down and wrote this blog entry out.

Crazy story, huh?  It’s insane how a killer can become so immortal in their minds that they still don’t trust the night.