Long Day at Harding Cross

“Ley lines,” Steve said. “Here. Where the steeple fell.” He turned toward us. His dowsing rods spun like helicopter blades. “It’s scary powerful.”

This pretty much confirmed what we’d already assumed.

A long day of glitching equipment, draining batteries, and compass points that wouldn’t stay true, had us moderately suspicious, yet still skeptical. But this, Steve’s find, put us back on edge, restored some of that energy we’d lost stomping around on the mossy stones and splintered crossbeams of forgotten Harding Cross Village.

Our team—Gwen, Talia, Steve, and I—had a reputation to protect. As investigations went, it all came down to the evidence. And as entertainment went, the better the evidence, the better the ratings. Gwen turned her camera on me expecting a quick, pithy sound byte. She had a knack for catching us at the right time, genuine emotions, subtle hints of fascination and disbelief, the things that resonated with our core audience, kept them coming back over and again, knowing it wasn’t all for show, for kicks, made up stuff just to pull in the big advertisers. We seldom faked it; sometimes we had to. Right then, though, we weren’t.

“What we have here,” I began, waving one finger in the air for emphasis, “is confirmation of…” I trailed off.

Gwen looked up from her camera monitor. “What? What is it?” she asked.

I gently took her camera then turned it on her. “Don’t move. Hold still,” I whispered. “It’s got you. I don’t know what it is, but it’s got you.”

“Damon, stop, you’re scaring me,” Gwen said.

Talia eased up behind me, looking over my shoulder. “Oh, wow.”

Gwen: “Wow? Just wow? What is it? What the hell? Damon? Talia? Say something.” Gwen swiped the back of her hand on the side of her face, thinking it was sweat. It wasn’t. It was blood, twin rivulets snaked from each eye. It filled her eyelids, welling up, red tears. She dabbed at her cheeks again, inspecting the blood-slicked fingers in disbelief. “Don’t stand there. Help me. We gotta get out of here.”

Steve marched up putting his arm in front of Talia and I. “Keep rolling,” he said. “We’re miles away from anything right now, and panicking isn’t going to help. Stay calm. Be cool. We’ll get you home and helped, but before we move it’s probably best to get a grip on what’s happening, some stabilization.” He moved in closer to Gwen, blood coming faster now, bigger drops, her eye-whites going scarlet on the edges. “At the very least we might need the footage to help emergency services figure out what’s wrong with her.”

“Footage?” Gwen said. “Really? My eyes are bleeding, Steve. Call an ambulance. Call a medi-chopper. Call the fucking National Guard, Steve! If I die here, swear to God, my ghost will haunt you for the rest of your fucking life.” She dabbed at her eyes again, not getting better. She soaked up what she could with the bottom of her shirt. “Ugh,” she said. “Talia, give me your hand. Lead us out of here. Let’s go. Now.”

Talia edged around Steve and I, holding her hand out. Gwen snatched at Talia’s wrist, latching on, fingers sticky with blood. “Lead on,” Gwen said. “And get that camera off me, Damon. And screw you, Steve.”

No response. Only silence. “Steve…Steve?” In Gwen’s haste to move, and in her reaching for Talia, and in Talia’s reaching for her, and in me trying to keep everything in frame, Steve had pulled back, away from us. I remember a swishing noise, something quick, slicing the air like swinging a length of taut rope or wire. I pivoted with the camera, pulling focus just in time to see Steve’s head drop from his shoulders, hands and fingers grasping inexplicably at a blood-spurting neck stump. The body wobbled, unsteady, finally losing footing, falling forward, arms stretched outward in a swan dive onto the grass-gridded cobble stones of Harding Cross.

Harding Cross Village, lost to time and memory. All we had was a map, tattered and burned with age, like you’d expect a pirate’s map to be. And the investigation had gone routinely with us scratching up speculation about the ruins and left-behinds, the rituals and superstitions hardly documented by only a handful of local porch-sitters, still remembering the elders of their own generations giving stern, crook-fingered warnings about not going into those woods, day nor night. Harding was cursed. Harding fought back. Harding lost, and it melted away, vanishing in shrubs and undergrowth within the space of two decades. The grim tale could fill volumes, they said, yet it barely filled a paragraph in the books we had found.

“I hate to be that guy, you know, the lizard-necked geezer shouting doom to the unwitting teens at the start of the movie. But…you might regret this,” our driver had said this as he left us on a dirt-crusted roadside about five miles east of the pinpoint on our map.

True enough, we had been warned. And now, with Gwen clawing at her eyes and Steve in two pieces on the ground, I turned to Talia. And she smiled. Smiled. She stretched her hands out beside her face. She screeched, an ungodly screech, not a human sound; it reverberated across the ruins and trees. I swear I could see the air undulating.

I dropped the camera just in time to see it with my own two eyes. Her entire body exploded. Thuwumph. Nothing more than a decibel of sound. It shredded her clothes. Her flesh cracked into detritus. Nothing bigger than a snowflake remained.

And Gwen, eyes completely gone now, gurgling and drowning in her own blood, she tumbled forward in the grass. Her dying words: “Your turn.”

The sun was setting beyond the trees. I propped the camera on a rock and watched the battery meter drain to zero percent. Long day. Long night.

©2022 J. Brian Reed