Page 20 - World of Darkness

food. Maybe they were just more circumspect in trimmed silver-white goatee, and was in an all-
the way they kept their journals than we are white suit and tie. The nightlight was on and he
today. But when you read a diary entry that cast a long shadow across her bed.
says, “Sky clear last night, Captain says whales
The couple had asked me to meet with them to
sighted off to starboard, Mary found dead this
counsel them about their son, a teenager who’d
morn, crew repairing damaged mast,” you have to
apparently been getting into trouble in school.
wonder if stoicism isn’t another word for denial.
They suspected he was using drugs, but things
The colony had a tough start. Most of the early didn’t sound that serious to me. I prayed with
colonies did. Plymouth lost all but 32 of its them, gave them some advice about approaching
original settlers in its first winter. And the their boy, and suggested some ways to open a line
Roanoke Island colony in the Virginia territory of communication. All told, I was there for about
had no one left when the next wave of settlers two hours. I walked back to my car feeling good
arrived. King’s Crossing seemed fated to go the about the things I’d told them. The snow had
way of Roanoke. Not only did the colonists suffer stopped and hadn’t left much precipitation on the
a drought that killed most of their first crops roads.
(reducing them to foraging, scavenging and rarely
The next day the girl was pronounced dead of a
successful hunting forays), but they were fre-
cerebral aneurysm.
quently raided by local Indians (who’d been
treated badly by other colonists in the area, and As I stood at the pulpit the following Sunday, I
thus lacked the goodwill enjoyed by the Mayflower felt as if death was laying siege to our commu-
pilgrims). A trader who’d braved the difficult nity, circling us, picking us off one by one. I
terrain to visit from another colony reported looked at the faces of my congregation and
that the coming winter was likely to “bring an wondered who would be next. I tried to sound
untimely end to the small endeavor.” upbeat and confident during my sermon, but it
was obvious to me that my words were powerless,
After that, there are no references to the colony
empty, unable to have any true effect.
for another 10 years when, remarkably, a report
says that the “village of King’s Crossing” is At the little girl’s funeral I found myself
thriving, with two grain mills, a textile mill offering predictable condolences, clichéd Bible
and several farms. The population has swelled by verses and uninspired comments.
a factor of 10 and there’s a thriving trade in
Walking to the graveside, a marble statue capped
glass and copper. The reason for this startling
development is not given. with snow made me think of the man in white. And
with a shock I realized I’d seen him before. I
Shortly after I pieced together this account, recalled glimpsing him in a hallway, wondering
events took place that distracted me from my at his unusual way of dressing. I thought about
hobby. Some of my congregation took ill and died that for several minutes, and as we gathered
of pneumonia. It was January of an especially around the small casket, I remembered. I’d seen a
brutal winter. There had been four deaths in the man dressed in white not so long ago. I was
space of two-and-a-half weeks. Two of the visiting the nursing home on Route 11, just west
deceased had been residents of a nursing home, of town. A woman there died of pneumonia later
one had been a young mother of two, and the that week.
fourth an apparently healthy college student. The
funerals were bleak. A few days after my recollection I asked Mr.
Crane, the president of the church counsel, if he
A few days after the fourth death, I visited a knew anyone who fit this man’s description. He
family that lived up the mountain a ways. I got didn’t.
there after dark. Even my four-wheel-drive had
some trouble with the ice and snow that night. I decided to spend some time looking through
church records. It seemed impossible to steer my
They had a rather long driveway that hadn’t been
plowed, and more snow was piling up. I parked by congregation through this dark, cold winter. I
wanted to see what my predecessors had done
the road and walked up to the house. Ice-covered
mounds rose on both sides of me like mountains during times of crisis. I wanted to read what
magic words they’d used to soothe everyone’s fears
on the moon. The air was so quiet that I thought
I could hear the faint ping of each snowflake and bolster their faith. On the second day of
investigating, I found a box of some very old
landing on the ice.
papers that had apparently been mislabeled. And
The house was a two- or three-bedroom ranch. As at the very bottom of the stack, sealed in some
I walked to the front door I passed a lit window sort of plastic or laminate, was a parchment
and happened to glance through. I could see into whose appearance gave every indication of being
the bedroom of their youngest daughter. The girl hand-written in the 17th century. I felt a thrill
was sleeping with a faint smile on her face. of discovery, which quickly turned to horror.
Standing next to her bed was a tall, thin man I
didn’t recognize. He was something of an eccentric “Such food as we have gathered is of poor
sustenance and quickly gone. Now the ice and snow
figure. He had short, white hair, a neatly
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COLD TRUTH