It was at the behest of the citizens of that small town of Ashfield that I found myself upon the doorstep of their Orphanage. Many had warned me of strange noises and echoing cries in the night in their letters, more so told me of how the building itself appeared to glow with an eerie dim light as though possessed by some evil spirits. According to the reports I received the local law enforcement had been unable to dispel the general fear and refused to investigate further; too busy, I assume, for such matters.
When I first arrived in Ashfield naught could have prepared me for the initial devastation that had been wrought on the people there. The town was in the grips of some terrible disease; wracked by a mystery ailment a large number had fallen and more still were dreadfully sick. This knowledge seemed to explain to me the origins of the letters I had received. During such hardships it is common to seek an explanation for one’s woes, particularly for those who are suffering from illness, delusional and desperate as they sometimes can be. However, as an investigator of public matters it was my duty to absolve them of their fears.
As I passed the orphanage in the cold sunlight it seemed perfectly normal to me; situated in an old manor house on the outskirts of town it was run by a convent, headed by Agnes, the Mother Superior.
Agnes complied to my wishes graciously and permitted me to stay for the night in the Orphanage so that I might investigate the strange happenings. There was little she could tell me of their source, only that ever since the outbreak children would disappear in the night- her concern was that a beast of sorts, perhaps a wolf or fox, had taking refuge in the building and was dragging the children from their cots as they slept. A likely theory though it was, if her nuns and wet-nurses kept as close a watch as she insisted any wild beast would surely have been sighted by now. I assured her that any such creature I encountered on my patrol that night would be swiftly dealt with. Agnes then gave me a short prayer of safety prior to my departure to spend the day speaking with the townsfolk.
Accounts of the mysteries that occurred at the Orphanage varied, and some I asked had no first hand experiences to offer. Because of this I would ordinarily be inclined to give up my pursuit and assume the noises of the night had been nothing more than the wind given voice by active imagination though I persisted with my inquiries, desperate for any information that may identify the creature robbing children from their cribs.
My interviewees did offer one intriguing morsel however, a solitary anecdote that did pique my interest. No matter my route of inquiry their attentions would be brought back to this outbreak. It had been occurring for only three weeks but regardless, they claimed the progress was both rapid and devastating, many had suffered violent spasms and thus deaths from this ailment.
However, in a bizarre coincidence which caught my attention the most, in its initial burgeoning’s the illness exclusively targeted couples, in particular those who had recently sired a young infant. This morsel of information raised my concern that a more sinister operation was afoot, a murderer could easily disguise a poison to appear the work of an illness after all. Once the couples perished their infants were being taken to the Orphanage, should access be available some madman could be the cause of both the deaths and disappearing children. God only knows what sick intentions the debased have, but murderers shy far from Gods light.
After dining in town, I returned to the Orphanage, the daylight now dimming as swiftly as is natural in the bleak winter months, and by the time I reached the pathway to the door it had faded to black entirely. Luckily there was a nun at the gate who had been lighting the lantern which hung from the arched trellis at the gate, and with the aid of her candle we reached the doorstep where Agnes let us in. There was no sign of any ethereal glow from the building and silence heavily blanketed the orphanage instead of the fabled noises in the night.
I was shown to my room, the furnishings as spartan as can only be expected from a convent. My carry case had been brought up earlier in the day, presumably by one of the nuns, and my belongings were the sole injection of personality into the bare living quarters. The layout of the building was easy enough to understand; the entranceway was large with two oaken staircases that led to the next floor. The ground floor held the sleeping quarters of the Convent and a chapel for prayer through the right-hand doorway as one entered, and through the left was the dinning room, adjoining with the kitchen and a nursery for the children to play and learn in. The two upper levels were entirely devoted to the children’s chambers. According to the Mother Superior there had previously been a ‘school room’ on the second floor to the purpose of teaching the older children, but it had to be altered to fit an additional dormitory to cope with the increase of orphans as a result of the outbreak.
Agnes seemed rather upset when I told her that my investigations in town had not shed any light on the situation, although she still hoped that I could help them obtain some form of clarity regarding the missing children.
As she guided me around the building, showing me room to room, I also made acquaintance with the few nuns and nurses that staffed the orphanage.
Firstly, we encountered Sister Margery, whom Agnes introduced as a devout wife of Christ.
Next, the chaste Sister Georgia- the ‘chaste’ said with much inflection.
Nurse Sarah – A gift from god, Agnes told me, she was still fairly new to the town of Ashfield.
Nurse Ann, a quiet, shy girl with mousey hair and similar disposition.
And finally, I met the Sisters Abigail and Jane. Jane was preparing a cot while Abigail held a peacefully sleeping baby in her arms. Ann, who had followed Agnes and I with a neatly folded blanket in her arms, took the baby from Abigail to lay it to sleep in the cot.
The atmosphere was one of foreboding as I went around fastening all the windows and being sure that no doors were left unlocked. Much to my surprise I could not find a single one that was not already locked up tight. The few windows that would open hardly cracked ajar enough to allow a rat in, let alone a plump country fox, and a wolf would have even less chance.
I puzzled over what could be causing the disappearances, again worrying of a more sinister occurrence. I took note in my journal to ask of the Mother Superior whom from the town had access to the Orphanage and revitalising myself with a sip of brandy from my hipflask. The journal I returned to my room, the hipflask I kept on my person, the brandy was to help with warmth, naturally, for now the bitter chill of winter had crept into the manor house.
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Most of the sisters had retired to bed, though two remained on each floor to check on the children and hopefully catch the culprit of the disappearances, and the chapel had one of the sisters present at all times.
Little happened as I sat in the hallway, kept company only by the sound of hushed footsteps and the occasional crying baby always to be followed by a series of calming shushes and the gentle hum of a lullaby.
Enacting the first of my patrols around the premises I encountered nothing out of the ordinary. On the second round Sister Margery was tired and came over a little faint, so I dismissed her to bed and offered to help Sarah every half hour should she require it.
It was not until it began approaching the fourth hour that anything peculiar happened; I thought I could hear the shrill cry of foxes or some other small mammal squabbling in the yard, so I looked out of one of the windows flanking the main door. I could see scarcely a few feet from the house due to the mists which had rolled in over the course of the night. The light that shone on the ground however was an unnatural mix of the most vibrant blues and greens which appeared to almost dance, their soft shifting reflected on the courtyard. Despite my attempts to shake myself of this view the light appeared to emanate from within the Orphanage, not that I could discern any such source from my vantage point inside. I reached for the door handle to go and investigate when I heard a determined scratching from one of the floors above, a noise like many fingernails scraping a chalk board, I shivered and the image of a thousand beetles desperately scrabbling over one another entered my mind.
Without thinking I drew my pistol and approached the stairs. I tried to be as quiet as possible.
After the first flight of stairs I nearly bumped into the two sisters on watch, both of whom were shocked to see I had my firearm raised. They followed me up the next flight of stairs towards the source of the noise, which they could not discern as clearly as I, despite my pleas for them to stay below in safety.
On this floor I took a moment to take stock of my surroundings. The scraping sounds had come to a halt, but when we heard it last it had most definitely been coming from a solitary room at the end of a corridor. I instructed the Sisters to check the other rooms in the earnest hope that they may find the Nurse unharmed.
I crept closer to the doorway, its illumination casting a gentle golden glow into the hallway. I held my revolver out in front of me, as the candlelight spilling from the door flickered something before it casting shadows through the door.
I was scarcely breathing, my thoughts solely on preventing any harm from coming to the baby I had seen set down in the cot mere hours ago. My heartbeat seemed painfully loud in the eerie quiet as I took the last few steps to the room- I steadied my grip on the revolver and stepped through the doorway. Within that room was a hideous thing standing on one of the cots and looming over the baby nestled inside; a grotesque eight legged spider-human creature, fully six feet tall, an elongated body protruding from a bulbous arachnid behind, covered in fur, with many red, piercing eyes and, most sickening of all, adorned in the pristine white gown of a Nurse. I had no time to do anything but utter a cry of despair as I saw one of the long, thin arms delicately place the baby in its gaping maw, fangs glinting in the candlelight, and the creature swallowed the infant whole. Frozen in shock and fear, the lazy gulp enraged me and shook me into action.
I cocked my pistol.
The noise alerted the creature and it lunged at me with alarming speed and ferocity. With a planned precision one of its legs swiped at the lamp in the room without halting its stride, smashing the glass and robbing me of light- I fired instinctively, the spark from the muzzle all I had to see by in this moment of panic. I just caught a glimpse of the creature staggering as the brief flare dissipated into afterimages- I had hit it! But alas it still moved toward me, and I quickly swept the palm of my hand over the hammer of my revolver as I fired off the next five rounds in quick succession, sparing no mercy. Each shot echoed through the manor in a cacophony of sound, babies cried, and harried shouts issued from below as the nuns ran to the commotion. With each shot I was greeted by the wet thud of steel puncturing flesh. I had struck the creature with each and every round and only in the embers of the last muzzle flash could I see that it was dying.
My gun chambers empty, I threw myself to the side lest the creature’s momentum carry it barrelling into me. Already coughing on the acrid stench of gunpowder, charred flesh and burnt hair, I hit the floor with a solid thump, a similar noise emanating from the open doorway as the spider-thing fell dead.
The two Sisters that had followed me to this floor rushed to my side. Pulling myself to my feet I tried to stop them as they turned their attentions to what lay beyond the door, a haze of gun smoke adrift in the air. My efforts were in vain however and both cried out in horror, their screams piercing, ringing in my ears.
I turned to console them, but as I stared through the doorway to the body of that wretched thing, it was my turn to cry aloud.
Lying on the floor of the room was the Nurse Sarah, mouth agape in a silent scream, her eyes tear ridden and laced with fear, her blonde hair matted with thick strings of blood. Smoke was eddying gently from the five bullet holes perforating her still body; another was slowly pulsing blood from the small child she cradled protectively.
The other nuns rushed to us, most of them still in their nightgowns. How could I let them see this, how could I look at them- or anyone for that matter given what I had done? I let the gun fall from my hand and to the wooden floor, its weight suddenly overwhelming. My body was numb, save for one sudden impulse; ‘run’, it told me. Run.
So I did, darting past the Mother Superior, pushing her violently from my path, speeding down the stairs as quickly as my trembling legs could carry me and instantly forcing my way through the door. A few paces down the path and I tripped, cutting my hands as I thrust them ahead of me to stop my fall. I turned back for a last look at the Ashfield Orphanage. There I saw that unsettling, otherworldly glow that the citizens were so scared of. I could see the very manor itself laughing at me, its rustic features given lifelike form as the wind carried its horrible, mocking laugh after me all the way as I ran through the town and out the other side.
Agnes the Mother Superior would later claim at the funeral that the devil had possession of me, that the illness which wracked the city had poisoned my mind and that I could not be blamed for this misfortune. Others who had heard tale from the nuns of my steadily emptying hip flask with its potent scent of brandy would muse that I drunkenly mistook the young, pretty Sarah for a ghost, having been confounded by the tales the townsfolk had told me.
More still would consider the Orphanage a place of evil. And those that claim they heard my terrified cries as I ran through the town would say I shouted of witchcraft and devil worship. It would be those people that would later burn down the Orphanage in a fit of rage and terror. With the nuns and orphans still locked inside, I might add.
As for myself, I kept running that night. I ran until I came to the church at the outskirts of the next town over. There I gripped onto the priest and confessed the crime, giving him all the truth I knew, of that which I saw and the very real spider-thing I witnessed. The creature had once, without doubt, been Sarah- I could see it now, her arriving in town conveniently before an outbreak that she surely must have orchestrated, using her poisonous daemon spawn children so that she could feast to her content under the guise of a helpful Nurse.
The priest consoled me for a day, but the police soon found me.
This account I have written; for the many tales told in Ashfield of the accursed Orphanage go on, growing in their complexity, fewer now telling of the strange detective that saw what he saw, all exaggerated beyond reasonable belief. And since I have taken note of the ever-increasing number of spiders that I find in my cell daily, this may be the only opportunity to tell some of you- those that will listen – the true account of the events. A first hand experience of the ‘incident’ at Ashfield Orphanage.
And so, farewell.