For Mr. Jones’ sacrifice, we gave him the honor of collecting those remains we could scrape together, largely from our own persons and the ground around us. We provided those to Father James, who put the remains in a spare urn he had in the church’s vaults. I regret that it was not possible for us to do better, but the manner of his death had been so gruesome and the devastation to his body so total that there was little option.
We also collected the remains of that fire spitter and put them down in the vault as well. However, as we set them down, they fell apart into ash, leaving us with a useless grey pile of dust. Since it was unclear to me how the creature had been summoned, I suggested that we store those remains in separate containers, just in case somehow they were to be retrieved later by a malevolent actor.
Once we had completed those tasks, Father James was kind enough to allow us to use his bathing facilities to wash off those parts of Mr. Jones that still clung to our bodies and clothes. Following that, we did the best we could to go to sleep and prepare for our next day. My boys all slept easily, which I found astonishing. Perhaps they found comforting the fact that they had delivered the lethal blows against that abomination. Sir Lucas, too, fell asleep before I did. Try as I might, I could not stop seeing the moment at which Mr. Jones’ body exploded before us. There were moments when I came close to dozing off, but those were brief and almost immediately the thoughts of that terrible moment shook me back awake.
So it was that I lay on my side, thinking of that instant again and again. I had not considered Mr. Jones to be a good man or a friend. I knew him for far too brief a time to judge him to be either. Nonetheless, it is a jarring thing to see a person one had gotten to know at least somewhat be rendered into naught but splatters upon the ground.
Then I heard that wispy wailing again. At first I thought it was merely a resurgent wind as a fierce blizzard set in on Ruthin. Then it sounded out again, whistling past the church. It was certainly that red banshee’s wail again. I was certain of it. When I closed my eyes, I could even see the red blur again. At last I felt I could discern what it said.
“Mae eich awr yma. Gweinwch y gwir. Lladd y celwyddau. Talu sy'n ddyledus,” it said.
I still had not developed any facility with Welsh, but I could at least parse out the noises and relay them to someone who could understand it. I woke Sir Lucas, who seemed terribly confused. Before I even managed to speak it to him, we heard it again, this time only louder.
“That’s the third time,” I muttered. “Someone else is dying tonight.”
“I think I understood what it said. Your hour is here. Serve the truth. Kill the lies. Pay that owed,” Sir Lucas whispered. “I think that last bit could be translated as ‘pay that which is owed’ but it was hard for me to hear.”
“The last words seemed to be lost in the wind,” I sighed. “I shall not be sleeping tonight.”
“Nor I,” Sir Lucas nodded. “To think in two days it will be Christmas, yes?”
“This will be my seventieth Christmas,” I said. “And it will be by far the worst.”
We did not hear anything more from the banshee as morning came. I speculate that, at some point, I must have finally succumbed and gotten some sleep as time passed too quickly otherwise. My boys all rose perfectly ignorant of what had occurred a few hours before with the banshee’s wails. Sir Lucas and I must have appeared visibly distressed as my boys looked at us with concern.
“Are you both feeling alright?” Thomas asked with a nervous chuckle.
“No. The banshee wailed while you were all asleep. Three times. Someone died,” I mumbled.
“Other than Mr. Jones?”
“Banshees don’t wail after a man is dead. Besides, there were three wails before him. This is someone else.”
Robert shuddered.
“I almost want to avoid going upstairs so we don’t find out who it was,” he said.
However, we summoned the requisite energy and rose to the church’s nave. We found Father James and one of his assistants continuing to prepare for Christmas Eve mass. He gave us a forced smile as he approached.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
“No, but that does not matter,” I said, even as my head bobbled about from my crushing fatigue.
“I cannot blame you, Doctor Willis. The wails of that banshee last night jolted me awake. I have yet to hear who its victim may have been,” he lamented, his voice crackling in grief. “How many more must die before this ends?”
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“I wish I could tell you,” I whimpered, still recalling the grisly sight of Mr. Jones’ body exploding before us. I then also remembered the sight of the honourable constable Mr. Burnell’s awful end. “With the Dullahan still at large as well, I fear there will be plenty more. That reminds me, we should get going to the notary. We have at least one death to report and, yet again, we don’t have a body.”
“You mean going to Cael?” Father James queried, his eyes squinting.
I jolted, surprised that this seemed irregular to him.
“Unless there is another recorder for deaths in this town, yes.”
“Allow me to come with you,” the priest insisted. “I can be a witness for your purposes.”
While that request struck me as odd, I assented to the request.
We found Cael at his desk, affixing seals to a variety of newly-updated land title documents. He ignored us for some time until we insisted that we have his attention. He smiled, his glasses riding up on his chubby cheeks.
“So, you have another dead man?” he asked.
“Adam Jones. He died last night,” Father James said.
“And did the gentlemen with you have anything to do with it?” Cael impishly inquired.
“Absolutely not,” Father James protested.
“And what would you like to list for the cause of death, Father?”
“For lack of a better term, arson.”
“That’s a funny name for what I heard happened to him,” Cael chuckled as he began drawing up the appropriate document. “I heard some great flaming beast walked into town and shot a bolt of flame into him, causing him to explode. Pieces everywhere. People were still finding some this morning, in fact.”
Father James, Sir Lucas, and I exchanged terse annoyed glances.
“There is what happened and then there is the official version,” I stated.
Cael laughed and took off his glasses to rub off a speck of dust.
“Can we just talk about how the two strangest deaths in the entire past year have accompanied the arrival of these men? Father James, doesn’t anything strike you as odd?” Cael continued to prod.
“They have nothing to do with it. They came here to Ruthin in pursuit of those things causing all of this,” the priest growled. This was a side to his persona I did not know he possessed. Based on his prior comments, I wondered if he had a disagreement with the notary.
“If you say so,” Cael sighed, finishing off his work. As he pushed the paper forward, his sleeve moved up his arm slightly, revealing a patch of burnt skin. I saw that Father James noticed it as well. “The attestation is ready for you to sign here, Father. Mr. Willis, if—”
“Doctor Willis,” I corrected him with a smirk.
“Doctor Willis, if you can sign as well. And Sir Lucas Pepys,” Cael insisted. “That should do it.”
We all attached our names, though I was careful to read what he had written so that we were not somehow signing a false confession. It looked to be in order as far as I could tell, though that was no longer the issue that bothered me most about Cael Powys.
“Until our next unusual death,” Cael chuckled and put the papers away.
Upon leaving, Father James turned to me with a wrathful gaze.
“You saw that burn upon his arm?” he asked.
“I did,” I answered. “A strange mark for any normal happenings.”
Sir Lucas looked befuddled and hopped to gain our attention.
“Pardon my asking, but what are you both speaking of?” he inquired, exasperated.
“The notary had a very strange burn mark on the skin of his right arm,” Father James said. “Absent having an accident in his fireplace, I struggle to imagine where he could have gotten that except—”
“You think he was in the presence of that fire spitter, yes?” Sir Lucas interjected, the relaxing glow of epiphany washing over him. “Ahhhhh, I see it now. Yes, yes.”
My first instinct was to go visit Doctor Yeoman again, as much as he would doubtlessly groan to us for incessantly troubling him and burdening his already miserable life. Nonetheless, I thought it possible that he might have some manner of insight as to Mr. Powys’ dealings. If nothing else, his contempt for his fellow man might have fueled his curiosity into a man as cryptic and loathsome as Ruthin’s notary.
We arrived at Doctor Yeoman’s office, which also had his residence in the floor above, around noon. Despite persistent knocking, we heard no response. I wondered if it was perhaps that he had simply chosen this as a moment to become a hermit. He seemed as likely as any man I had met to utterly withdraw from society. That would be a fine option, given the circumstances, had we not needed him.
John took the initiative that I myself feared to take. He opened the front door, finding it surprisingly unlocked. That itself struck us as odd.
“Apologies, Doctor Yeoman,” I called out from the open crack in the door.
Nothing. No response at all.
“Hm. Maybe we should go,” Father James said. “He may be indisposed.”
I ignored the priest’s suggestion and instead pressed on into the office. I noticed that there were some candles still burning from the night before. The wax had melted to such an extent that they were now but little nubs, almost entirely depleted. My boys followed behind me with Sir Lucas and Father James a touch behind them.
“Doctor Yeoman?” I called out again.
Silence.
I noticed in the back corner of his first floor a figure slumped in a chair. I recognized from the general silhouette Doctor Yeoman’s frame. I knew then that my worst fear had been realized.
Carefully, I approached him and pulled on his shoulder.
“Good heavens!” Robert shouted behind me as he saw Doctor Yeoman’s corpse tumble to the ground.
His skin was pale and his entire body desiccated. It was as though all of the fluids, blood, pus, bile, and so on had been taken out of him. His eyes had sunk back into their sockets, leaving deflated white cushions in abyssal cavities. His jaw drooped toward the left and his dried-out tongue. As he had died some hours before, his entire body had begun to stiffen into rigor mortis, twisting and contorting in the most grotesque ways.
“Well, that explains the banshee’s wailings,” Thomas quipped behind me.
“Saints preserve us,” Father James gasped, making a sign of the cross in response. “Our demonic foes have no sense of decency.”
For Doctor Yeoman, I muttered a quick prayer wishing his soul a safe journey, though I feared his soul may have become trapped in our world as well. For myself and my sons, I offered a desperate silent prayer that we might be so fortunate as to survive this foe.