Bloody Cobblestones
a story inspired by Blood on the Clocktower
by MW Lindberg
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.”