Bloody Cobblestones
a story inspired by Blood on the Clocktower
by MW Lindberg
DAY 1 / DAY 2 / DAY 3 / DAY 4 / DAY 5 / DAY 6
DAY 1
They woke in their little houses, each to a one, with no memory of where or who or how or what they were. They searched these close but unfamiliar environments for clues to themselves and their situations, believing at first they may each have to face this challenge all alone. Then a voice called outside, a bell rang, doors opened, and apparent neighbors stepped out into chilly morning sun to find a way down twisting cobblestone lanes to a town center of a kind, and a group of strangers looking back at them with mirrored looks of confusion.
In the center stood The One with Braids, holding a hand bell, explaining they had woken with no knowledge, found the bell among the things they didn’t recognize, and thought it would be useful for calling out to anyone else awake in the village. Everyone shared they had found themselves in an identical state of mind, but in varied domiciles that must hold the clues to exactly what function each of them must have once served or does serve or is meant to serve in this town. Blonde Beard had found themself the sole proprietor of a small inn. Stringy Red Hair discovered themself in a bakery. Nine Fingers woke on a straw mattress in a corner of a dark blacksmith’s forge (with one fewer finger than everyone else).
Breakout conversations began. Speculations sparked. Doubts flitted. The house assignments can’t just be blindly trusted, can they? Tattered Skirt insisted they did not feel much like a bookseller in their soul. And many folk woke in rooms of no particular description at all. Who were they meant to be?
Perhaps to fight the panic they began to sense reaching out at them from the voices of these sudden strangers, Spectacles stepped away from their impromptu faction for a deep breath of air and became the first person to look up toward the rooftops, and the first, but not the last, to scream.
A clocktower stood on the far side of the town center, humble but authoritative, the tallest structure in the village by a mere story or two. Everyone followed Spectacles’s horrified gaze to the body impaled on the tower’s spire, face upward, four limbs flung outward to the winds. The slanted roof of the tower shone a bright and almost cheering burgundy in the pleasant sunshine, making one want to remark on its beauty until one realized the color came entirely from the blood that had drained out of the corpse.
“What could have done that?” Whispered Hand-to-Heart.
“Nothing human...,” Eyepatch grunted.
“Should we get them down?” Nine Fingers asked.
“How?” Blonde Beard answered.
“Something evil did this,” Shoe Buckles declared. “And it’s still here.”
“I feel it too,” spoke up Baby Face.
“What do we do?” they all began to wonder. And The One with Braids, the one with the bell, stepped up to answer.
Braids made teams and delegated tasks. Food got prepared and served. (Blonde Beard started spreading the opinion that maybe the houses mean nothing because Stringy Red Hair was no baker.) Spectacles led a crude mapping of the village’s borders and determined the community to be quite stuck on a remote rocky mountainside that would take a proper expedition to figure how to navigate away from safely. Eyepatch and Nine Fingers figured as far as they could tell the town possessed no mechanical means of getting the body, whoever it happened to be, up onto the tower spire, and thus no means of getting it down. But, as Eyepatch seemed almost pleased to point out, the flesh would give way on its own soon enough, and the body would find its own way back to the ground.
Evening fell. Braids had intended to gather everyone back in the square to discuss overnight practicalities, but everyone had naturally gravitated back to where the most folk were anyway. No one seemed eager to be caught off on their own and potentially find themselves the next to be displayed on the village architecture. So a kind of town meeting all but began itself as the descending darkness brought silence, and fear, to the attendant denizens.
Braids rang the bell and then regretted it, the sound only making the silence more apparent.
“There are thirteen of us,” Braids began. “Fourteen if we...,” they looked upward then away. “There are thirteen of us. Our houses are small, but it may be a good idea to make partners for the night. Sleep on floors. Trade watches. Utilize the few rooms at the inn perhaps. So no one is alone in case... anything happens.”
Some murmured assent.
“And what if it was one of us?” Velvet Cloak spoke up from behind everyone else.
“If what was one of us?” Braids asked, not wanting the answer.
“If that,” Velvet Cloak pointed at the decaying corpse in the sky, “was one of us.”
Hand-to-Heart gasped.
Eyepatch rose from their lean against a post. “Nothing human could have done that!”
Velvet Cloak held still. “And what if one of us isn’t human?”
The One with Braids had to ring the bell again for silence. People sitting close to each other separated. Blonde Beard glowered at Stringy Red. Hand-to-Heart moved protectively towards Baby Face, then seemed to think better of it.
Velvet Cloak took the space. “Think about it. Why bewitch us in this way, remove our memories, make us forget each other? Unless we’re not supposed to recognize the one of us who isn’t supposed to be here?”
“I didn’t want to say anything before,” Neck-Scratcher piped up, scratching away at their neck. “But this one was outside of their house this morning before any of the rest of us! Walking around like they knew exactly where they were going!”
Neck-Scratcher stopped scratching only long enough to point a sharp finger at the one everyone had started calling Frog Mouth. Frog Mouth, in the middle of a mouthful of Stringy Red’s stringy attempt at bread, gulped and choked and croaked out an explanation about having run out of their found cottage in fear, and being on their way back to it when they must have been seen by Neck-Scratcher. It sounded most pitifully like a lie.
“We should lock them up for the night, just to be sure,” Neck-Scratcher growled.
“I did see a jail!” Shoe Buckles interjected.
“Unless they can’t be caged by normal means,” Tattered Skirt fantasized. Everyone looked to them. “If they aren’t human they could have all kinds of powers.”
“So what do we do then, we just kill them?” Blonde Beard suggested. Frog Mouth choked.
The One with Braids rang the bell. “We have no evidence any of this is true. Everyone just go to your homes. Or the homes you found yourselves in. Lock your doors. Try to rest. We aren’t thinking straight if this is the kind of world we’re entertaining. We’ll pick this discussion back up in the morning.”
Frog Mouth ran home as soon as it was clear no one would stop them. Blonde Beard offered no one safety in numbers at the inn. Velvet Cloak took Neck-Scratcher into the shadows for a private conversation. The One with Braids went to Nine Fingers as the person they felt had the calmest head on their shoulders to ask if they’d like to buddy up for the night. But Nine Fingers had been shaken by the evening’s events, and murmured apologies as they scuttled back to their straw mattress, only to find when they reached it that the blacksmith’s shack had no way to lock its door.
DAY 2
The handbell brought them out of their homes again the next morning, but they knew from the sound that this was no courteous wake up call. This was an emergency siren.
Clouds covered the sky this morning. And blood covered the cobblestones of the town square. Baby Face stood ringing and ringing the handbell, sweating and weeping as everyone else converged on what was left of the body of The One with Braids.
“Oh no...,” whispered Hand-to-Heart.
“Fascinating,” murmured Spectacles.
“I knew this would happen,” said Velvet Cloak.
“Nothing human...,” Eyepatch repeated.
“How did you get the bell?” Nine Fingers asked Baby Face.
“It was here, it was just here, I didn’t, I couldn’t do this, how could I do this, I just picked up the bell because it was here!” Baby Face sweated but held tightly to the bell.
“Why didn’t they ring it when... this happened?” asked Hand-to-Heart.
“Maybe they didn’t have time,” Eyepatch suggested.
“Maybe they did ring it, and we couldn’t hear,” Tattered Skirt began to fantasize. “My sleep was heavy and dreamless. Maybe we all sleep an enchanted sleep here so the evil creature can do as it pleases.”
Shoe Buckles moved away from Tattered Skirt.
“Are we all here?” Stringy Red Hair asked.
Everyone looked around and counted. Blonde Beard and Neck-Scratcher were having a hushed conversation in front of the inn, but everyone else was present and alive.
“Twelve now,” said Nine Fingers.
“It’s gone!” Frog Mouth bellowed, pointing upward. The body on the spire was gone.
“Fell off in the night,” Eyepatch guessed.
“Or maybe the thing finally ate it.” Shoe Buckles and Hand-to-Heart began whispering about Tattered Skirt and their disturbing imagination. “Maybe it wanted us to see the body just to know what was in store for us,” Tattered Skirt continued, “but the real reason it’s killing is to feed.”
Everyone looked back at the remains of The One with Braids for as long as they could stand. Certainly some of that body was missing.
“Or it’s just evil and wants us dead,” Frog Mouth pouted.
Baby Face yelped as Blonde Beard appeared beside them to whisper them to ring the bell. The bell was rung.
“We’re all here already,” said Velvet Cloak, “What is it?”
“We have some important information to share...” Blonde Beard said, allowing Neck-Scratcher to step forward and take the spotlight.
Neck-Scratcher pointed a scratchy finger once again at the cowering Frog Mouth. “This one was outside of its house again. In the night!”
“I wasn’t!” Frog mouthed. “I wasn’t!”
“I was awake!” Neck-Scratcher hissed. “I saw you!”
“That’s not true! You’re lying!” Frog Mouth gulped in panic.
“Did anyone else see anything?” Spectacles asked.
Baby Face deliberated. “Maybe? When I first got here, I thought I saw someone running off across there, but I couldn’t be sure.”
Neck-Scratcher seized on this new evidence. “That’s where our houses are, down that very lane!”
“It wasn’t me!” Frog Mouth bellowed. “I didn’t do it!”
“What do we do?” Shoe Buckles stammered. “Put them in the jail?”
“There’s no key to the jail,” Eyepatch grumbled. “So it’s useless to us.”
Blonde Beard appeared behind Frog Mouth to say, “So we just kill them. After what they’ve done, we can’t take the chance.”
“Not killing!” Hand-to-Heart prayed, “We can’t start killing each other, that’s what the evil thing is doing!”
“We won’t stop it unless we kill it before it kills us!” Blonde Beard shouted.
Opinions were voiced, whispered, debated, roared.
Velvet Cloak approached Baby Face who was silently sweating. “Ring the bell.” The bell was rung.
“We will vote,” Velvet Cloak declared. “Who thinks Frog M-... this person before us, should be somehow detained until we can determine their true nature?”
“True nature??” Frog Mouth whined.
The vote for detention was unanimous.
“And who thinks this person before us should be killed, before they themselves can kill again?”
Velvet Cloak raised their own hand. Blonde Beard and Neck-Scratcher’s hands shot up. Baby Face lifted their hand. Shoe Buckles and Hand-to-Heart looked to each other for guidance. Shoe Buckles raised their hand. Hand-to-Heart did not. Tattered Skirt raised a hand. As did Eyepatch.
“That’s enough. The vote passes. The evil in our midst will be killed.”
“You can’t!” Frog Mouth cried.
Blonde Beard and Neck-Scratcher had weapons in hand already. A wooden beam and an iron rod. Frog Mouth was cracked across the skull; they screamed and turned to run but soon found themself backed up against the wall of the clocktower. The town trapped them. The executioners advanced. Frog Mouth bled and saw that there was no way out. So they smiled.
“I’m not the only one in your midst... And I am not the Master... None of you will leave this town alive!” And Frog Mouth made an awful guttural sound, shook their jowls in a decidedly inhuman way, and spat a wad of repulsive green bile a ridiculous distance into the face of Hand-to-Heart who screamed and wretched and turned away blinded. Blonde Beard and Neck-Scratcher fell on the evil before them and put a bloody end to it.
The sun broke through the clouds by midday. Hand-to-Heart recovered their sight with some ministering from Shoe Buckles and Baby Face, but said they still felt quite unwell. Stringy Red Hair made more terrible bread, and Blonde Beard took Neck-Scratcher and Velvet Cloak into the inn to tap a keg they felt it unnecessary to share with the others. Eyepatch volunteered to clear the bodies, and no one cared to ask what they did with them.
“Maybe that’s the end of it,” Spectacles said, reexamining the jail with Nine Fingers. As two of the few who didn’t vote for execution, they felt some kind of camaraderie. The jail cell did in fact lack a key, but the door could be tied shut and guarded, if the need arose. “The threat of others in our midst could have been a bluff. Whatever that thing was certainly had no problem lying to us.”
“Maybe,” Nine Fingers wondered, “But it doesn’t feel over, does it?”
They looked into each other’s eyes.
“No,” Spectacles agreed. “It does not.”
DAY 3
They found the next morning’s body in one of the side lanes. Hand-to-Heart sat listlessly on their front stoop staring down at the remains of their closest neighbor, Shoe Buckles.
“Same kind of attack,” Spectacles noted. “What would have made them come outside?”
“Did you see anything this time?” Tattered Skirt asked Neck-Scratcher.
Neck-Scratcher scratched and looked down at the bloody lane. “I slept at the inn. Had a few drinks so... slept heavy.”
Tattered Skirt said, “Hm.”
“I’ll get this cleaned up,” Eyepatch volunteered. “Maybe someone should see to...” Eyepatch gestured toward Hand-to-Heart.
No one stepped up at first, suspicion fighting fatigue fighting selfishness. Stringy Red Hair finally relented, offering a hand to help them up from the stoop. “Maybe you can help me with the day’s bread?” Hand-to-Heart looked up at them, somehow far away, and slowly took their hand.
They said nothing until their hands hit the dough in the back room of the bakery. “I was so sure they were good, I seemed to just know it, but now I’m not so sure. Now I think they were one of the evil ones.” Hand-to-Dough kneaded like they knew what they were doing.
Stringy Red struggled for a third day to make their sticky paste become anything else. “But they’re dead.”
“These creatures may have all kinds of powers...”
Stringy Red caught the echo of Tattered Skirt’s wild imaginings.
Hand-to-Heart continued. “Maybe killing is a kind of recruitment. Maybe that first body on the Clocktower is the Master creature. Maybe all the dead are evil.”
“You’re sounding like the bookshop owner,” Stringy Red warned.
“They’re not a bookshop owner, in their soul.” Hand-to-Heart slashed a knife across their plump loaf.
Eyepatch appeared outside Nine Fingers’s blacksmith forge. “I feel like I have to pick someone to trust,” they grumbled.
“You can trust me,” Nine Fingers replied, unsure that trust could go in the other direction.
“I moved the body.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“It had this, clutched in its hand.” Eyepatch produced a scrap of parchment on which someone, presumably Shoe Buckles, had scrawled: “NOT AT THE INN.”
“Let’s keep this to ourselves for now.”
“Those three stayed at the inn last night. Maybe one of them wasn’t really there?”
“Just keep it to yourself. It could mean a lot of things.”
Eyepatch thrust it at Nine Fingers. “You keep it. I don’t want it. But if I find anything in the next body, I’ll bring it to you.”
Nine Fingers took the scrap and watched as Eyepatch skulked away. They stepped back into the shack and tossed the piece of paper onto the embers of the forge where it took flame and disappeared. Then they found their tools and began to work.
At Velvet Cloak’s word, Baby Face rang the handbell, and nine of the ten survivors circled up.
“The bread was good today,” Spectacles said to Stringy Red. “Are you remembering how to make it?”
“I made it,” Hand-to-Heart said, staring at a bloodstained cobble.
“Yes, I had help today,” Stringy Red confessed.
“Where’s the blacksmith?” Blonde Beard asked.
They were answered by a metallic squeaking coming across the town square, and everyone turned to see Nine Fingers wheeling some kind of iron contraption into the center of town.
“What is it?” Spectacles asked.
“If you’re all so convinced you need to kill each other in the daytime as well, the least we can do is do it humanely. Even if some of us aren’t human.” Nine Fingers gripped a lever and jerked it back. Part of the apparatus snapped down and part of it whipped across and part of it chopped into itself.
Everyone fell silent, staring at the machine and at Nine Fingers with alarm and respect.
“Who-who would... pull the lever, though?” Baby Face stammered.
“I would,” Blonde Beard smirked in their direction.
“Well I wouldn’t!” Baby Face sputtered back.
“Whoever throws the person’s name out first pulls the lever,” Nine Fingers declared. It had the desired effect of making even Blonde Beard shrink back.
Velvet Cloak nudged Baby Face, and the bell was wrung again. “Well who has a name, then? Surely someone has some information we can act on.”
No one responded.
“Our lives are at stake here, surely we all agree on that.” Velvet Cloak stared into the faces of Blonde Beard and Neck-Scratcher as if prompting a rehearsed reaction. They looked at each other. Neck-Scratcher scratched. Blonde Beard looked at the machine again.
“Fine,” Blonde Beard began. “You were the first one outside, and the one always whispering with them yesterday. And you’ve been acting strangely all day.” Blonde Beard’s finger stuck out at Hand-to-Heart.
Hand-to-Heart barely reacted.
Stringy Red reacted instead. “That thing spat in their face yesterday!”
“We don’t know what that was! Maybe it was passing the evil on or something!”
“You have no other evidence against them!”
“Something’s wrong with them today!” Blonde Beard shouted. “They’ve been calling everyone evil under their breath and moping about.”
“They may be under some kind of magic spell,” fantasized Tattered Skirt. “Maybe not all the evils kill, maybe some just interfere with us in other ways...”
“You’re even worse!” Blonde Beard spun on Tattered Skirt.
Velvet Cloak made Baby Face ring for silence. “Do you have anything you want to say for yourself?” they asked Hand-to-Heart.
Hand-to-Heart still looked aloof and absent. “Just kill me. We’ll all be dead soon anyway.”
Only Blonde Beard voted for them to die. “Fine!” they then growled. “What about this one!” pointing now at Tattered Skirt.
“You’ve had your say,” Velvet Cloak shut them down. “Does anyone else have any suspicions?”
“Only one person in this circle is truly bloodthirsty," Stringy Red began. “And it’s you.” Blonde Beard found themself on the other end of the makeshift trial process.
“They’re bloodthirsty!” Blonde Beard struck out at Nine Fingers. “They made this machine!”
“They just want us to take this seriously,” Eyepatch defended. “Which you clearly don’t.”
“As far as I can tell, I am the only one trying to out the evil in this town. I got one of them yesterday, didn’t I?”
“Vote,” Velvet Cloak commanded.
Stringy Red raised a hand. Eyepatch raised a hand. Tattered Skirt raised a hand.
“That isn’t enough,” Velvet Cloak ruled. “Anyone else?”
Blonde Beard, still in the center of the circle, turned again, this time on Stringy Red. “This one! They’re not a baker, we all know that! At least the blacksmith proved they have the skills for the house they’re in. This one is just faking it!”
“You’ve had your say already,” Velvet Cloak shouted.
“And this one,” pointing to Baby Face, “First to the body yesterday morning, and we’ve just let it slide!”
“Enough!”
“Or this one!” On Eyepatch now. “So happy to take charge of the bodies and the blood!”
Velvet Cloak took the bell from Baby Face and rang it themself. “So no one dies today. And if no one leaves their houses tonight, maybe that’s enough to give us a respite. Lock yourselves in, barricade your doors, arm yourselves, stay awake. If we don’t know where the evil is coming from then we’re all on our own. Keep yourself alive. And maybe tomorrow we can talk about leaving this hellish place for somewhere safer.”
As the sun began to set, the community broke apart. Nine Fingers left the machine in the center of town. If it had been their intent to discourage executions with it, it had worked. Stringy Red offered Hand-to-Heart a mattress at the bakery, but they didn’t even respond as they drifted back towards their cottage. Tattered Skirt returned to their study of the more esoteric volumes they’d found under their bed at the back of the bookshop. And despite their isolationist speech and their public conflict with Blonde Beard, Velvet Cloak joined them and Neck-Scratcher at the inn once again.
Baby Face entered their one-room cottage, dropped the bar across the door, and pushed the table against it as well. They drew the curtains and pinned them against the walls with the backs of chairs. They put the handbell on the mantel and stuffed the chimney full of extra firewood and kindling and cloth. They then lifted a couple floorboards and removed from a secret space in the ground a long flintlock blunderbuss, spilling gunpowder from an accompanying pouch as they loaded it, sweating, hands shaking. They blew out every candle and sat against the bed, facing the door, with the firearm pointed at the enemy’s most likely entrance.
DAY 4
Baby Face shook awake, raising the blunderbuss to the door again and finding dull morning light testing the seams in the curtains. “I’m still alive!” They hid the gun again, unbarricaded the door, grabbed the bell, and began the walk to the square.
The clouds had returned, and the air was wet and misty. Their feet slipped now and then on damp cobbles. The first person Baby Face encountered was Tattered Skirt, walking swiftly away from the center of town holding themself and staring back with an odd look on their face.
“Did it happen again? Who was it?”
Tattered Skirt made no reply and simply hurried off.
Baby Face found most of the others gathered at the inn examining a grotesque and bloody crime scene. The front door had been broken off its hinges, and just inside lay the body of Blonde Beard, but not torn apart like the others. A thin dagger had been stuck into their chest, and judging by the look frozen on their face it had been quite a surprise.
The door to the guest room formerly occupied by Neck-Scratcher had also been torn out of its frame, much as most of Neck-Scratcher’s limbs had been torn from theirs.
Velvet Cloak was found sleeping peacefully in their room, claiming to be unaware anything had happened at all. So the assembled citizen security force hauled them out into the town square towards the execution machine as a light rain began to fall.
“You’ve been the one pushing this whole execution process!” Stringy Red Hair jabbed a finger at Velvet.
“You had those two idiots wrapped around your little finger,” Eyepatch grunted.
“Why would I have killed them, then?” Velvet Cloak protested.
“Maybe they were onto you,” Spectacles suggested.
“Why was the innkeeper stabbed, though?” Nine Fingers had to wonder.
“Maybe that kill wasn’t the creature but one of its minions.” Baby Face hadn’t noticed Tattered Skirt rejoining the group.
“It’s just trying to confuse us,” Eyepatch spat. “Let’s vote on this, I’ll pull the damned lever.”
Nine Fingers looked around. “Wait. Are we all here?”
The group felt much smaller now. Even smaller than it should. “No, we’re not,” Stringy Red realized.
They found Hand-to-Heart in their bed, eyes open, both hands on their heart now, stone cold.
“Three in one night,” Nine Fingers stated.
“All so different from each other,” Spectacles considered.
Stringy Red acted much more contemplative on the walk back to the machine. Eyepatch only seemed more furious. “This only cements my feeling that this evil thing before us is too powerful to let live!”
Velvet Cloak attempted to reason. “Why would I have done things in this way, making myself look so guilty? Killing my closest allies?”
“It could all be part of the plan somehow!” Eyepatch’s one visible eye swung wildly around the group. “Even if some of you are evil too, we have to believe most of us aren’t. We have to take this into our own hands. We missed an opportunity yesterday, and three people died!”
“You wanted to kill one of those people yesterday,” Nine Fingers pointed out. “And you were clearly wrong.”
Eyepatch faltered. “Well we don’t have another option, do we?”
“We do,” Stringy Red Hair said. The rain became steady. The sky darkened. The day seemed somehow already slipping away from them. “I haven’t told anyone this. But there’s a real risk we could kill someone we shouldn’t, so you all need to know.”
Despite the rain making everyone with hair start to resemble Stringy Red, everyone stood very still and listened.
“I’ve been lying. I didn’t wake up on the first night in the bakery. I woke up at the jail. With this...” Stringy Red produced a large metal key. “It’s the key to the cell. So we can just lock this one up and see if the killing stops.”
“Unless they have a way to get out,” Eyepatch challenged.
“Or a minion among the rest of us who can just kill you and take the key,” Tattered Skirt mused.
“We can all sleep in the damn jailhouse if we want,” Stringy Red answered. “Keep an eye on them, and each other.”
“You’ve just been lying this whole time?” Nine Fingers seemed unable to get past that detail.
“I didn’t know who to trust,” Stringy Red shrugged.
Baby Face rang the bell, and everyone jumped. “We vote,” they said. “For detention, or for death.”
Stringy Red, Nine Fingers, and Velvet Cloak themself, of course, voted for detention. Eyepatch, Tattered Skirt, Spectacles, and finally Baby Face voted for death.
“Four is more than three,” Baby Face declared.
Eyepatch grabbed Velvet Cloak and began to drag them. “Don’t I get to counter this? I say we vote for you!” they yelled, spitting at Eyepatch. “It isn’t me! I swear! Who votes for this one-eyed corpse-lover?”
No one raised their hands. Even Velvet Cloak couldn’t vote as Eyepatch and Spectacles held their arms. Nine Fingers respected the will of the town and assisted in getting Velvet Cloak into the contraption.
“It isn’t me, though! You’re making a mistake! It’s still out there!”
Eyepatch gripped the lever. “That’s exactly what you’d say if it was you.” They pulled the lever. Part of the contraption snapped down, part whipped across, part chopped into itself, and blood flooded out onto the cobblestones.
Everyone spent the rest of the stormy day away from each other. Eyepatch put the remains of Velvet in the inn with the others and nailed the door back into place. Spectacles walked the perimeter of the village again, to take a second look at possible routes out of town and down the mountain, a trek that would surely be even more dangerous if the rain kept up. Baby Face barricaded themself back in their house with their gun at the ready, just in case Velvet’s protestations had been as genuine as they sounded. Nine Fingers stayed in the square in the downpour and watched the blood wash off the terrible instrument they had created.
A maelstrom shook the town throughout that night and into the morning.
DAY 5
On the fifth day of waking in that place, the beleaguered good and the unknown number of evil gathered to find Stringy Red dead and the key to the jail cell gone.
“Five alive,” murmured Nine Fingers.
Baby Face ran back to their house to hide again behind the perceived safety of the blunderbuss.
While doing a second search of the jailhouse for the key, just to be sure, Eyepatch took Nine Fingers aside briefly, though Nine Fingers wouldn’t stand too close. “My head was in a kind of fog yesterday. I was certain the one in the cloak was evil. I knew it had to be them.”
“And you may have been right. They just weren’t the only one.”
“No, this is what I’m telling you. That fog has cleared. I wasn’t thinking sense. It was as if I was thinking someone else’s thoughts. Some kind of spell like the shifty bookseller goes on about. That’s how they’re turning us on each other.” Eyepatch’s one visible eye grew even wider, and Nine Fingers watched it twitch. “It must be the Bookseller themself!”
Spectacles appeared at the door of the jail. “I was thinking the key must be on one of us, or in one of our houses. Or shops.”
Eyepatch jumped to it. “Where’s the bookseller now? It must be them!”
Spectacles nodded, “I think I agree. Maybe the three of us go together to check their shop?”
Eyepatch began moving instantly.
“Wait,” Nine Fingers said. The other two looked back at them. “We check each other first.”
The three of them turned out any pockets they had, shook the folds of their garments loose, removed shoes, shook out any hair. They found no key among them.
“Had to be sure,” Nine Fingers said, and the others nodded in agreement.
At the bookseller’s shop they began tearing through shelves and drawers and trunks. Tattered Skirt came upon them all just as they had found the stash of dark, occult-looking volumes hidden under the bed.
“Those were here when I first woke,” they said.
“Have you been reading them?” Eyepatch wanted to know.
“Of course! I thought there might be something helpful in them.”
“Something you could use against us!”
“Don’t you think the evil ones would already possess whatever powers they planned to use against us? Why would they need books?” Tattered Skirt fairly giggled.
“We haven’t found the key,” Spectacles said quietly, trying perhaps to talk Eyepatch down.
“Were you looking for the jailhouse key?” Tattered Skirt smiled. “That would be long gone, don’t you think? Thrown off the mountainside, down a well, or swallowed by the evil master, whatever they may be. They certainly don’t intend to lock any of us up, that must be apparent. Why would they need the jail when they’re so close to killing us all?” Taking their smile to themself, they turned and left the other three to the mess they had made.
“It’s them!” Eyepatch hissed. “I swear I’m of my own mind, and I can see it so clearly, can’t you both?”
Nine Fingers and Spectacles looked into each other’s eyes and did see some kind of agreement there.
Outside, Tattered Skirt examined the iron killing machine.
“Get away from it!” Eyepatch yelled. “They could be trying to sabotage it somehow,” they said to the others. Nine Fingers began to doubt Eyepatch was indeed of their own mind.
Tattered Skirt took a step back but seemed otherwise unbothered. “Did you check all our houses? If you think one of us would be so foolish as to keep the key around? You probably didn’t...”
“Let’s just get this over with, right?” Eyepatch all but pleaded.
“If you mean the voting,” Spectacles began, “we aren’t all here...”
The four of them approached Baby Face’s cottage together. Before they could get close enough to knock, the door flew open, and Baby Face jumped out, pointing the firearm at each townsfolk in turn.
“Where did you get that weapon?” Nine Fingers asked.
“It’s mine. It was in my house.”
“Put it down!” Eyepatch growled. “We need to vote!”
“I’m not doing the voting anymore!” Baby Face declared. “I’m staying in this house and shooting any of you who try to get inside!”
“We don’t think it’s you!” Eyepatch scolded. “You can help us vote for this one!”
Tattered Skirt laughed. “It’s isn’t me!” They began to step forward toward Baby Face ever so slowly. They pointed an ink-stained finger. “This is the one who took up the bell from the first bell ringer. This is the one who has been secretly forcing trials and hoarding weapons. This is the one who has done nothing to help us figure out what exactly is even happening here...”
All four of the others began to feel a pull in their minds as Tattered Skirt slid forward, focus and finger on Baby Face. Eyepatch felt their suspicion slide. Nine Fingers remembered Baby Face standing over the body of The One with Braids. Spectacles remembered Baby Face’s votes for the executions of their neighbors. Even Baby Face themself began to suspect they could be responsible for this evil somehow and not even know it.
“The one we should kill,” Tattered Skirt almost sang, “is the babiest face...”
Holding on to whatever sanity remained in them, Baby Face pulled the trigger of the blunderbuss. Tattered Skirt’s upper chest and neck exploded outward, backward, upward.
Instantly, the four surviving minds cleared.
“Did you feel that?” Spectacles asked.
“It really was them,” Eyepatch stated, panting.
Nine Fingers only nodded, looking down at the body and up the splash of blood against the opposite building.
Baby Face kept the gun raised, though they knew they would need to reload it if they wanted to use it again.
“You got them,” Eyepatch stated, hands up.
“You felt it! We all did. An evil presence in your mind?” Spectacles asked, also keeping their hands visible. “And it stopped as soon as they died. It was them.”
“It’s over,” Eyepatch promised.
Nine Fingers didn’t know how they were so sure. Apparently Baby Face wasn’t so sure either, because they responded by bouncing right back into their house and sliding all possible manner of barricades and securities into place behind their closed door.
Eyepatch waved a hand at it all. “Leave them. They’ll calm down by morning.” They stepped towards the newest body. “I’ll take care of this.”
Spectacles reached out a hand and stopped them. “Maybe don’t even touch it. Just in case.”
Eyepatch just stared back, but all three of them then turned and walked away from the body and the barricaded cottage.
That night showed stars. And an almost full moon.
DAY 6
The final three survivors stood in the heavy mist almost exactly where they had stood the day before. The remains of Tattered Skirt lay just where they’d left them, but that wasn’t the trio’s focus. The door to Baby Face’s cottage had been completely destroyed, barricade materials snapped, shredded, thrown. The blunderbuss had been impossibly twisted and bent in two. And the remaining pieces of Baby Face were in even worse shape.
Each one of the survivors looked at the other two. Nine Fingers, Eyepatch, Spectacles. One of them had been the Master this whole time.
Returning together to the execution machine, they attempted to maintain some civility.
“Two of us just have to agree,” Eyepatch said.
“And whoever is outvoted just has to get in the machine,” Spectacles said.
“If we’re wrong they’ll get a better death than what’s waiting for them from the actual evil,” Nine Fingers said.
“We should take our time to make the right decision,” Spectacles counseled.
“I only know it isn’t me,” Eyepatch said.
“Well it isn’t me,” said Spectacles.
“It isn’t me,” Nine Fingers said.
“Are we sure there isn’t something else? Something that, I don’t know, comes down from the sky at night?”
“There have been evils among us. The Frog Mouth confessed. We felt the magic of the bookseller thing. It still hasn’t ended. It has to be one of you.”
“It isn’t me.”
“It isn’t me.”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere. What evidence do we have?”
“You built this machine,” Eyepatch said to Nine Fingers. “This way for us to kill even easier.”
“Yes,” Nine Fingers agreed, “And I had to be a blacksmith to do it. I’m confirmed as my occupation. Neither of you has an occupation to demonstrate.”
“I handled the dead!” Eyepatch bragged.
“And what did you do with them all?” Spectacles asked.
“There was no open ground to bury them. So they’re all in their beds.” Eyepatch seemed almost embarrassed to admit to that level of care.
“We should check that,” Spectacles said to Nine Fingers.
“What do you think I did, eat them?”
“Perhaps,” Spectacles replied. “The one on the clocktower is gone, maybe eaten.”
“I found it behind the tower. As I predicted it slid off in the night. That spire was too sharp, sliced right through the flesh, eventually.”
“Ghoulish.” Spectacles shuddered, passing judgment.
“You’ve done absolutely nothing but tell us we can’t leave!”
“Yes, you mean I’m the only one who looked for a way out of here!”
“So no one else would try, probably!”
Nine Fingers had been quiet for some time. “Be quiet, both of you.”
They complied.
“I know it is one of you two. You’ve both been voting for executions. You’ve both been doing suspicious projects that kept you on your own and made you aware of information others didn’t have. But I do believe one of you is good. We killed the Frog Mouth. We killed the Bookseller Witch. Even the one in the Velvet Cloak may have been the one that left the inn vulnerable and stabbed the innkeeper. If you were both evil this would already be over.”
“So it’s them!” Spectacles took the initiative. “I believe you. I think you’re right about everything. My vote is for them! We can stop them!”
“It’s you!” Eyepatch retorted. “Look, blacksmith, I brought you that note, from the fancy one with the Shoe Buckles, I didn’t have to do that.”
“What note?” asked Spectacles.
“I believe the one with Shoe Buckles died trying to tell their neighbor that the evil one wasn’t staying at the inn,” Nine Fingers explained. “And yes, you brought me that note, but nothing else.”
“I didn’t find anything else. Besides, I didn’t know if I could trust you still. You never showed the note to anyone else?”
“I burned it,” Nine Fingers confessed.
That gave Eyepatch some doubts. Spectacles leapt into the moment of silence. “This one has been pushing for executions harder than the innkeeper was! Coming out strong against one person after another.”
“I was bewitched!”
“You could have been pretending.”
“I believe them,” Nine Fingers declared. “And why would the Bookseller Witch curse their Master?” Nine Fingers looked to Spectacles about to make a decision. “Is your vote for them?” they asked Eyepatch. “Or for me?”
Eyepatch looked from one to the other.
“Maybe it is them!” Spectacles tried a new tactic with Eyepatch. “Who says a demon can’t have blacksmithing skills? Who says they’re even the one that made this? I’ll vote with you if you think it’s them!”
Now Eyepatch seemed to be in the swing vote position.
Around the three in the thick mist at the foot of the clocktower, the specters of the dead gathered, unseen, but doing everything in their power to influence the outcome of the deliberations, for better or for worse.
“No, my vote is for you,” Eyepatch told Spectacles.
“Then my vote is for you!” Spectacles told them back.
“And my vote,” Nine Fingers began, as the ghosts in the mist pressed in on them, “...is for you.”
A break in the wet clouds released moonlight onto the clocktower and the square as the fog began to lift.
“Get in the machine,” Eyepatch told Spectacles.
“No...,” they protested. “You got it wrong! You got it wrong!”
Eyepatch advanced. “Whoever gets outvoted just has to get in the machine. You said that yourself.”
Spectacles desperately grabbed onto Nine Fingers. “It isn’t me, though! I swear to you! Vote again! It’s them! I’d get in the machine, I swear, but it isn’t me!”
Nine Fingers wrapped their nine fingers around Spectacles’s two wrists. “It’s over. Just get into the machine.” Eyepatch was on them now too, dragging them toward it.
“No, it’s wrong! It’s not me!”
They forced Spectacles to the machine.
“Hold them down if you have to!” Eyepatch shouted. A wind picked up, and the mist began to swirl, the clouds to flee. The stars appeared to spectate.
Spectacles fought with surprising strength.
“It has to be right,” Nine Fingers muttered to themself. “It has to be right...” With a final shove, Spectacles hit what served as the seat of the machine. Not waiting for an all-clear, Eyepatch gleefully yanked the lever. Part of the machine snapped up. Part of the machine whipped across. Part of the machine chopped into itself. The blacksmith lost another finger.
Blood splashed out as the machine cut, speared, and crushed the body within it. The previous time, death came instantaneously, but this time Spectacles kept screaming. It didn’t seem possible. Until the scream began to morph into a sound like chittering insects on fire, like frustrated hate boiling alive. Spectacles’s head swelled and blistered. Their arms lengthened and twisted. Leathery, jagged wings tried to grow free within the confines of the machine. Bolts and broken bits of metal pinged off the stone ground as the thing caught in the cage thrashed, trying to break free, bleeding all the while. The blacksmith and the corpse-retriever fell back. The back of the machine fell away as the wings of the creature reached full extension. The bottom of the machine crashed down onto one of Eyepatch’s legs as the creature took to the sky. Eyepatch felt a snap as the metal frame cracked into a bone.
The howling imp leaked blood, bile, and entrails as it flapped into the air, pieces of the machine still buried in it, pieces of its body hanging by sinews. It refused to accept its obviously imminent death. It flew, stupid and frantic, directly at the clocktower. Unable to steer itself, it smashed into the face of the clock and slid downward, leaving a bright and nauseating streak down the front of the building. By the time it hit the cobblestones, the creature was dead.
The blacksmith helped remove the heavy frame from off of Eyepatch, and helped them stand. The two clasped hands, looking into each other’s eyes.
“Can you walk?” the blacksmith asked.
“Try and stop me,” the other grunted.
The blacksmith picked up the pair of spectacles that had fallen to the cobbles and chucked them in the direction of the messy pile of machine parts and demonic viscera.
“Then what do you say we set fire to this forsaken place and find a way out of here.”
Eyepatch grunted and chuckled. It sounded like a reasonable plan. “I’d vote for it,” they said.
end