Page 21 - World of Darkness

keep us trapped here where none can help. We
have eaten the horses and dogs. The children cry.
There is talk of eating the corpses.
“He came to us last night and his voice was sweet
and friendly. ‘Hear me and save yourselves,’ he
told us. ‘Do as I bid and you shall again see the
spring.’
“I can not write the unspeakable thing he de-
manded of us.
“Lane Richards challenged, ‘And what price do you
desire for this unholy salvation?’ and the
monster replied, ‘Nothing to-day. But I shall
return, fifty years hence, and take what I must
from thirteen of you and your kin, and each
fifty years do likewise. And should there be one
who withholds my payment, all shall be slaugh-
tered. But do as I bid and your village shall
prosper always, this I vow.’
“We could not but agree. It is so cold. And so
those of us fresh with youth now will, as we
grow gray, wait for the return of the One in
White.”
My hands were shaking as I sifted through the
rest of the contents. They were death records,
carefully annotated. Just fifty years ago, there
had been thirteen deaths among the parishioners
in the month of January. Fifty years earlier, the
same. And fifty years before that.
I didn’t want to believe it, of course. Clearly
someone with an active imagination had put all
these pieces together, then boxed them up and
moved on to something else.
But—
I visited the family whose little girl had been
lost. They were taking it hard, as was to be
expected. We prayed and talked. At one point I
asked as casually as I could muster if they had
ever seen anyone in the parish who was thin, had
white hair, and who favored white clothing?
They immediately became uneasy. They claimed not
to know who I was talking about, but their eyes
were hesitant, agitated. Part of the grief reac-
tion? Maybe.
I tried to dismiss what I’d found. The thing was,
five people had died since January 1st. And it
was only January 23rd.
That weekend I spent a lot of time working on
my sermon. The gospel text was the raising of the
widow’s son. It’s a story that parallels the more
familiar tale of Lazarus, brother of Mary and
Martha. A resurrection story. I read it slowly
and clearly during the Sunday service. Then I
started my sermon. Death, I said, is not the
ultimate power. Jesus triumphed over death, and
through him, so will we all. I mentioned how
throughout history, we’ve tried to conquer death
in our own limited way. How we have personified
it into the form of the grim reaper. How the

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Chapter 1- THE SECRET HISTORY