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Chapter 6 - The Omen

West Coast,
Devonshire, Dartmoor
3 November 1898, 7:15 p.m.


There were always those moments in life when one was at a crossroads and felt the significance that the decision could bring. For Kyle, the two options were to look up or to stay. For a heartbeat, time crept slower for him and the grain of sand wedged itself in the neck of the clock instead of falling. Almost as if it wanted to give him enough time to judge which path to follow. Then the grain of sand slipped, the river slid on, and Kyle turned his head towards the priest.


"Father." he drew attention, then rough, worn leather settled into the man of God's hands. "Here. Hold the reins for me."


"Where are you going?!"


Kyle glanced towards the Doctor, expecting to see him continuing busily to help the coachman get the luggage off the wagon to make it lighter. He expected the latter to be fully concentrated on his work and pay no attention to him.


Instead, he unexpectedly met the direct gaze of the other seeker. Benjamin Archer looked over at him as if waiting for something. Kyle blinked. Had the doctor seen it too? Or did Dr. Archer just not understand what he was trying to do? His thoughts bounced back and forth, undecided whether to let him in on it or keep him in the dark. Of course, he knew what the wiser decision would be. Often enough, however, people with better knowledge made the most disastrous wrong decisions.


What would the other seeker, with whom he was not on good terms anyway, think if there was nothing to be found in the forest? If he now behaved as hysterically as the timid priest because of a noise or a waft in the mist, the doctor would certainly not let him forget it so quickly. If Dr. Archer spread the word around the Order, his reputation would be in tatters before he could even build one! The thought pushed a heavy, hard stone into his stomach. No. There was no way he would allow himself to be exposed. He had worked hard for it, had sacrificed too much, and bled for it! Therefore, the young Seeker instantly tightened his posture and the tug around his lips became sterner.


"I'm going out."


"What?! Now?!" the Father sounded as if Kyle had just told him he was planning to have a picnic in the forest.


"Yes. It's urgent. And what could happen?" he shrugged, then waited a moment. As if he deliberately wanted to leave Dr. Archer the opportunity to object. In fact, the man opened his mouth and stood up. But then he closed it again. Silence hung in the air for a few moments as if someone was waiting for a flag to be waved.


Just as Kyle was about to leave, however, a, "Just a minute." sounded. Dr. Archer leaned into the carriage interior, then approached his colleague and held out the walking stick with his coat, as well as the lantern. A long crack ran through its glass and the casing was a little dented, but it would serve its purpose.


"Don't go too far away." he then finally voiced the thoughts that were troubling him. It sounded more like a command than a request, though. Kyle, who was about to slip into his coat and might have been about to thank his partner, paused in mid-motion. The wavy hair, like dark feathers, cast dancing shadows in the light of the lantern. A quick nod and Dr. Archer turned back to his work on the carriage.


The smacking of sticky mud faded into the rustling sound of grass, moss, and sodden lichen as he left the path. Damp darkness greeted him. The glow of light bumped against the thick wall of mist that condensed around him as soon as Kyle had taken a few steps. It smelled of earth, resinous, of plants, herbs, and foliage. Once again, somewhere in the far distance, the howl of wolves echoed across the forest. It would have been a beautiful melody had it not been dark night and had he not seen the eerie apparition before.


Kyle took one deep breath in and out. His chest moved with the movement, rising and falling again. He was not a coward and neither was he defenseless. He knew what he could do, that he was excellent at what he did. In his chest, however, his heart beat wildly, drumming a completely different rhythm than his thoughts did. Therefore, he took his steps slowly, deliberately, and cautiously forward. Dartmoor bore its name, not by chance and he had no intention of sinking in here somewhere at the bottom of the world. Not to mention that bog waters stank beyond belief and you could burn your clothes afterward.


His breath jerked intermittently into the night and the soft leather of his gloves crunched softly as he tightened his grip around the walking stick. The hard metal of the pommel nestled against his fingers as if to reassure him. Watchfully, his gaze slid around. The trees were lined up like soldiers of a still unknown commander and the sounds as well as the bland lantern light of the carriage faded with every step. Restlessness fluttered in Kyle's chest, like a caged sparrow that kept flapping wildly against the bars of his ribs. Kyle tried to make out something in the darkness. A movement, a subtle sound, however faint, or the silhouette of a figure.


Slender fingers in soft leather gloves tensely traced the engravings and grains on the curved handle of his walking stick. What was he looking for or expecting here? He couldn't answer that question himself. Most likely he was just ruining his good shoes or catching a cold. He didn't need a colorful imagination to turn unthinkable into an eventuality at least worth considering. As a member of a society that did not suspect but knew that the supernatural existed, fairy tales could turn out to be horrifying realities surprisingly quickly.


So: according to his studies, what could be prowling around in these woods? Will-o'-the-wisps. Ghosts. Fairies. Boggarts or perhaps even more powerful creatures. He knew dry theories, but fantasy quickly blurred facts. Documentation and reports were sometimes flawed, shallow, and inadequate. Could it really have been a Yeth hound? Did the Wild Hunt roam these woods? And what should he do if he encountered them?


He turned his gaze from side to side. A frosty breeze brushed his heated cheeks and over the fine drops on his forehead. He had to pull himself together. He was no superstitious little local. The chance of encountering something truly supernatural was vanishingly small. Many searched for it all their lives and found nothing except charlatans with magnetic mechanisms under wooden tables or the odd haunting.


The explanation, in this case, was certainly simple. A sensory illusion, a breeze, lantern light that had fallen on leaves. Maybe it was just a hunter living far away or a feral animal that had run away in the meantime. These thoughts made his pulse change from a sprint to a run. He could have gone back.


All at once, his foot bumped into an unexpected obstacle. Through the opacity of the fog, he didn't see it in time and Kyle almost dropped the lantern. He staggered forward a step, then thankfully caught himself and wheeled around. Mist billowed like a cloak, silently receding to the side, and Kyle stared at the image at his feet. A fox lay there in the moss. The fur was caked with moisture, he was already partially sunken and in an advanced state of decay. Kyle grimaced in disgust. How disgusting. But nothing alarming. A dead fox in the woods was nothing unusual. He exhaled in relief and was about to turn away when something else caught his eye. Its shadow flowed darkly across the exposed ground, drowning the deep patches between leaves and stones. The sight made a pudding of his knees.


A bird lay with outstretched wings on the dark moss. Small ants climbed over it, dissecting the body into mouthfuls like a ravenous shadow. Only a little way away, a hare lay over a log as if it had simply fallen over in mid-leap. Kyle's heart stuttered. He stared as if his gaze was frozen on this bizarre scene. Kyle raised the lantern to follow the grotesque trail of dead bodies.


When he next stopped, carcasses of dozens of dead ravens lay scattered among tattered plumage across the forest floor. They hung between or half under leaves bent and twisted on sticks as on stone. Dead ravens were never a good omen. Kyle's heartbeat hooks like a panicked deer as his gaze climbed a large fir tree. He peered strained into the darkness, reaching up so the light could stretch his fingers higher and pierce the mist a little. He immediately regretted it. The bodies of dozens of birds hung in the treetops like a macabre ornament.


'What the hell happened here?!', it raced through his mind and Kyle took a step back from the tree. All at once, the cold seemed worse than before, biting into his skin. He took a shuddering breath and fought rising nausea. For suddenly he smelled it too. That sweet smell that had settled underwood and bog and covered it up with it: death and decay. 

Calm. Calm. His voice admonished him.


But the icy claw around his chest barely loosened. Hurriedly, his gaze darted through the darkness and mist, seeking and finding the distant specks of light on the road. From the spot where he stood, they were tiny and barely visible. He tried to keep his thoughts together. Then he slowly crouched down and looked at one of the dead ravens. This one looked like it hadn't been dead long. The Seeker leaned his walking stick against his legs, grabbed one of the branches lying around, and used it to turn the black messenger of misfortune around. Its feathers were shiny from the dampness as if morning dew had fallen on them. There was no wound. No torn flesh. He lifted himself and approached the next animal. No injuries. They were simply dead. As if they had just fallen from the sky.


'That's why it was so damn quiet,' he concluded, listening again into the night. 'Nothing. There were frogs, dead birds, rabbits, and hedgehogs. Even a deer lay on the mossy forest floor with its eyes wide open, as if it had just fallen over. If you looked for it and the fog didn't spread its cursed swathes over it, you saw death everywhere. He tried to understand what had happened here but found no answer.


"Kyle?!" it suddenly echoed in the forest and the seeker flinched. He almost toppled over backward. His gaze flew in the direction from which the voice had come.


"Here!" he returned, raising the lantern so the doctor could see the light. "Benjamin! Come here!"


With firm, deliberate steps, the dark speck of wavering light approached, parting the white-grey swathes and cramming through as if it could cut them. There was something unexpectedly reassuring when the tall figure finally peeled out of the haze. At last, he was no longer alone, surrounded by cadavers and death.


"Where are you? The carriage is roadworthy again and-" Kyle saw the doctor falter. He stopped, paused, and his gaze slid over the same, disturbing sight that had presented itself to him. "What the hell?"


For the first time, they seemed to agree and ask each other the same questions. The doctor went down on his knees and reached out to pick up one of the birds. Simply, the raven's scrawny head sagged down the edge of his fingers, just hanging there, wobbling with each movement as Benjamin stood up and stepped closer to his comrade. His brow lay furrowed in brooding wrinkles, but then his gaze slid around again and then lingered on Kyle.


"Was it you?" he asked, and Kyle raised his eyebrows jerkily at this baseless accusation.


"Do I look like I go into the forest to kill animals just like that?" asked Kyle in an indignant voice.


Dr. Archer hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. He put the bird down to settle next to another animal. "No external wounds. It's like their hearts just stopped beating," he noted. Kyle nodded in agreement and crouched down beside the man as well. "There's more a little ways off. I followed..." pointing into the thick haze, "...a trail of cadavers from back there to here. Some of them looked like they'd been there a while," he reported. Now that Dr. Archer was here, the night lost some of its terror. Still, he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling of being watched and gave in to the urge to look around again.


"Could it have been a spell?" asked Dr. Archer all at once, his gaze settling on Kyle's features. The latter slowly turned his gaze to the side and met the doctor's almost piercing green eyes bathed in light.


It was the first time this man had asked his opinion or considered his knowledge. It was a small moment of wordless, mutual recognition. Therefore, he did not make silly jokes as he looked at the bodies again with a critical eye.


"There are many spells of all varieties all over the world. I'm afraid I only know a fraction of them." he mused, "It could be possible. But it could be anything else. I just don't see the point in killing forest animals with a spell. Especially..." at this he pointed his chin at the many animals, "... why go to all that trouble, for a few animals in the middle of nowhere?" He paused. "If I wanted to check the remains for occult activity, I would need more time. Besides, now, in the middle of the night and with the two ignorant people, I don't think we'll be able to examine this area more closely."


The doctor nodded understandingly. "Maybe it's a disease too," Dr. Archer considered thoughtfully.


Kyle gave a pressed gasp and turned a little paler around the nose because he was absolutely not comfortable with the idea!

Dr. Archer emitted an oddly dejected snort, half-turned his body towards his partner, and propped a hand on his knee. "You strike out into a trackless bog in the night and fog, following a trail of dead animals, and the mention of a possible disease, makes you gasp?"


He saw the change in the Seeker's countenance. "That's different." hissed Kyle, and Benjamin heard the warning rattle of an irritated viper he had just stepped on the tail of.


"I see." More than usual when he spoke the words, the pleasant voice came from the center of his body. Full sounding dark velvet with the smoky resonance of a man who chose his words carefully, using them to express his disappointment. Then he reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a folded handkerchief in which he wrapped one of the smaller, dead birds.


"Very few diseases of animals are also dangerous to humans. " lied the doctor, whereupon Kyle's expression visibly relaxed. "Nevertheless, we'd better play it safe. In my suitcase, I have materials to check. When we get to St. George, we may be able to find out more." He added and braced himself.


The coat rustled around the taller man as he reached out and Kyle actually grabbed it to be pulled to his feet. Neither of them had given it a second thought, and so for a moment, there was a weird vibe between them. Archer looked embarrassed because he himself didn't know where the idea had come from and Kyle pursed his lips because it kind of made him cringe in pride afterward. 


"Let's go back," the tall military doctor said before the dark mop of hair turned in a movement that was more than mechanically abrupt by his standards and trudged ahead toward the carriage. 

West Coast, Devonshire, Dartmoor3 November 1898, 7:33 pm


A large lump rolled off Kyle's shoulders as the cart disengaged from the mud with a jerk and started moving again. It was that relief that flooded through you when you turned on the light in a scary house. It just helped. Even when you knew full well that even this circumstance could not protect you from the horrors in the end.


Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, they moved away from the secluded spot in the forest. But the uneasy feeling did not leave him entirely during the rest of the journey. Kyle's thoughts circled like vultures around the carcasses there in the forest, searching for an answer in all directions. Only to find none in the end.


Dr. Archer seemed to feel the same way. His brow was furrowed, his brows drawn together and his eyes stuck like glue to the book in his lap. This time it was he who had pulled out a notebook and was scribbling medical things of some kind in the booklet beside him. At least Kyle suspected they were medical things. Dr. Archer had obviously not bypassed the cliché that doctors' handwriting was all scribbles and completely illegible.


The priest, who had been incredibly talkative before, had lost some of his chatty moods due to the accident. Instead, he slid back and forth in his seat, seemed to feel an increasing number of bumblebees in his buttocks, and fumbled with one wooden bead after another on his rosary. Perhaps he was counting the seconds or minutes until they would finally get out of the forest and to their destination.


So Kyle turned his gaze outside, where the dense white closed the carriage back into the opaque curtains of flowing mist. He looked for flashing lights within, for a shadow, a suspicious billowing of the haze. But to his relief, none of it showed.


They drove for a while. Then, at last, sounds crept to his ears that were more than welcome. Outside, a chirping rose hesitantly, then more and more distinctly, while stalks of cotton grass peaked through the white and the loud croaking of frogs rang out in chaotic choruses. Finally, an owl hooted and Kyle recognized a shadow swooping through the water vapor. Life seemed so natural and returned in all its density as if everything before had been nothing more than a bad dream.


Chapter artwork: The Omen by TheKomor_San.All collected artwork & further sketches etc. can be found in the chapter *ARTWORKS*.

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