The port’s bells echoed over Dunport-Salem and jolted Benjamin Umber from a deep sleep. It was around five in the evening on a chilly December day in 1898. As he rubbed his eyes and looked around, the first thing he did was wonder if he had finally lost his mind.
Ben, as we’ll now call him, had spent most of the day locked up in a dusty attic. He stared blankly at the far end of the room, doing his best to ignore the hunger gnawing at him. Eventually, he drifted into a pleasant dream, a welcome escape from his less-than-ideal life at St. Dunsany’s Home for Unsolicited Foundlings.
It was then that he noticed a thin, lanky spider that scuttled up and about, back and forth, to-and-fro, in a corner. Curious little critter, thought Ben, finding amusement in the situation.
It was a daddy longlegs, which didn't just spin a web at random, but whose movements hinted at purpose. Almost as if it was thinking. Its design beginning to form, Ben couldn’t help but be curious of the outcome. He leaned against the slanted attic wall and squinted, carefully examining the web.
After what felt like an hour, Ben concluded that the massive cobweb in the attic read BIERCE SQUARE—SUNSET. The longer Ben stared into it, the less he felt it to be a freak accident of nature. No, that would be too convenient, like all the other strange occurrences in Dunport-Salem: strangers that vanished into crowds, statues that moved overnight, and the creepy sounds that came forth from the cemetery without explanation.
No. Ben had long believed these were all linked somehow. But a message written by a spider in St. Dunsany’s attic? That might be pushing his conspiracy theories too far.
His stomach grumbled loudly, protesting his internal thoughts. Maybe his fatigue had caused him to start hallucinating. Perhaps it was just a trick of the fading light, or he was half asleep, caught in a waking dream. Miss Wormwood had locked him up nearly a day ago, judging from the bells he heard earlier. Still, there was no denying that something strange was happening right under his nose.
The problem was that no one believed him. After all, who would believe a forsaken fifteen-year-old orphan who had overstayed his welcome at the local orphanage? His failure to be adopted was a painful fact that Miss Wormwood and her wardens liked to remind him of whenever they had the chance.
It wasn’t a simple life, but Ben never complained. A timid child with an insatiable curiosity, it was this trait that drove him to nightly escapades in the streets of Dunport-Salem. Escapades that, when discovered, secured him a ticket straight to the orphanage’s attic under lock and key—as in the present moment.
“Time to reflect on your sinful ways,” Miss Wormwood liked to say. But Ben would instead double down on his endeavors in sheer juvenile defiance. As for the other orphans, they knew better than to be seen with such an undesirable delinquent as him. Life under Miss Wormwood and her cohorts was difficult enough as is. And so Ben whiled his childhood away, engaged in a lonesome and futile crusade.
The cobweb quivered. Ben noticed a spider dangling from it next to the cryptic message. He focused intently after rubbing his eyes. The spider was flailing its stick-like legs at it. “I’ve gone mad as a march hare,” Ben whispered to himself. He crawled to the other side of the attic, for it wasn’t big enough for a man to stand in, and further examined the strange scene.
The spider wasn’t there anymore. Maybe he had imagined it. The message, however, remained as legible as if it had been written with ink and pen: BIERCE SQUARE—SUNSET. Bierce Square was the name of Dunport-Salem’s main plaza. As for sunset…
Clang! Clang! Clang! The port’s bells announced the day’s end, which meant sunset was ten minutes away at the most. Ben weighed his hunger against his curiosity. A getaway from the attic would undoubtedly earn him an even worse punishment from the caretakers. He could imagine their ugly, malicious countenances as they delighted in coming up with new ways to make him miserable.
The occasion was too good to let pass, though. His curiosity won. Ben sneaked to the other side of the room and pressed his ear against the door. No sound came from the hallway. Miss Ratworth would be marching the rest of the orphans to their supper of tasteless gruel by now. He crawled toward the attic’s sole window as he had countless times in the past and shimmied it until he heard the satisfactory click that presaged his freedom.
Ben was free again. The familiar crunching of the roof tiles as he jumped from building to building, the salty air sweeping his unruly mass of dark brown hair, the heavy sea fog clinging to the streets below him—it was from this vantage point that he had appraised the city and its denizens countless times, ever since he could climb onto the roofs and escape the nagging of the orphanage’s wardens. He moved like a hawk circling above its territory. Treading such familiar paths, it wasn’t long before Ben reached Bierce Square.
Dunport-Salem was not that big of a place after all. Gnarled trees, older than the place itself, bordered the plaza’s somber greenery. Contrasted by the rain clouds above, it painted a dismal picture.
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He positioned himself above a local bakery with a convenient brick-slip chimney to duck behind and examined the dispersing crowd. His dark gray eyes darted from one side to the other, like two chunks of graphite, earnestly looking for answers. He smelled the fresh bread and cinnamon as it wafted into his nostrils from the chimney.
Time passed. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Ben started to question the nature of his venture. What was I expecting in the first place? Anxiety started to creep in. If any of the misses opened the attic door and found it empty, he’d be in serious trouble. He shifted uncomfortably on his spot, considering calling it quits and speeding back to the orphanage. And then there it was.
Ben felt as if the world had held its breath, and he had no choice but to do likewise. The swollen clouds broke into rain with the crack of thunder. Along with it, Ben heard a potent voice, unimpeded by distance: “Seize your prey, Clarent.”
A wave of scarlet light burst from Bierce Square’s epicenter. It jostled with brightness, and as it slithered across the unbothered commuters, it morphed into the shape of a serpent. In a mere instant, it circled Bierce Square and formed a ring by biting its own tail.
As it spun, the circle it formed became smaller and smaller with each lap, encroaching upon itself until it disappeared. A fraction of a second later, the light ring expanded with a loud discharge that caught Ben off guard. He held tight to the chimney and tried his best not to be seen, awe-struck.
Quick as whiplash, a small, hooded figure emerged from the otherworldly explosion without stopping. It switched between sprinting and stumbling away as best it—or as she, Ben surmised from her frame—could. As if in tandem, two brutish figures followed not a moment later.
Ben’s heart thumped in his chest. He glanced at the crowd again. What few people remained in the plaza seemed not to notice anything out of the ordinary! Ben cursed. The reddish light dissipated into the air, mocking him. It was always the same: a shadowy conspiracy taking place before his very eyes, wherein all the adults agreed to feign ignorance.
Someone caught Ben’s eye from the ground. He squinted. It was a boy around his age, dressed in black, his long, wiry hair parted in the middle and hanging to the sides of his aquiline face. He was holding an exaggerated silver sword in one hand; it looked more like a theater or Halloween prop than an actual weapon.
He looked intently at Ben, as if he knew perfectly well that he was there, crouching on the bakery’s roof. He became increasingly convinced of this and also felt inexplicably certain that the voice he had heard belonged to this mysterious boy.
A pedestrian passed in front of the boy, and just like that, he wasn’t there anymore. Ben lingered for a moment, trying to find him again, but he knew that he was gone. With renewed determination to find out what was going on, he stood up, shook the dirt off his clothes, and followed the trail of the mysterious girl and her pursuers.
He had approximately an hour before Miss Wormwood would finish his attic penance, providing him with enough time to investigate. A little more carefully now, on account of the rain, Ben made his way in the direction of the three strange arrivals.
They had taken King Road, which led straight to the cemetery. Its narrow, crooked pavement was hugged on either side by equally narrow houses, which was ideal and Ben’s preferred method of urban traversal. The night fell fast and heavy, but he had been doing this for years. As he ran, jumped, and slid, the roof tiles welcomed the soles of his feet like old friends.
But as much as Ben scrutinized the area, they were nowhere to be found. He checked the pubs and the taverns, whose subtle differences he could not tell; he checked the angled alleyways that sprung from King Street as if roots from a stalk; he checked the edge of the older houses nearing the cemetery, which started to space out from one another and served as the boundary of his rooftop realm.
As much as he searched, he could not find anything out of the ordinary. He might as well have imagined the whole thing. Too much time in the attic without food or company, the usual, half-baked explanation sprung to mind.
Bummed and out of options, he begrudgingly called his search off and made his way back to St. Dunsany’s. His mind raced with thoughts as it formed theories about their identities. Could it be ghosts or extraterrestrials, like in the faded penny serials they had back at the orphanage that he loved to read?
There was also the matter of the boy in black and his peculiar sword. Ben stopped in his tracks, remembering the words he had heard, as if they had been spoken next to him. What was the deal with that? He had seen strange things before, but what happened today was on a whole other level.
“Seize your prey, Clarent!” Ben pronounced with a flourish, imitating him extravagantly. He stood immobile for a few moments, expectant, but nothing happened. Bummed but not surprised with the results, he resumed his way back home. As he saw the familiar jutted gables of the building, the rain started to grind to a halt. Ben quickened his pace, stepped on a loose tile as he made the last leap, and slipped.
As he tumbled, the world became a blur. He landed face down into a bush. He curled and braced for impact, but the twigs cut at his face and already worn-and-torn clothes. He landed with a heavy thud that sucked the air right out of his lungs. His eyes teared up, but otherwise managed to compose himself. He tried not to make a sound, not to arouse anyone, and not to make the slightest movement to avoid being spotted.
He tentatively pressed his face, torso, and legs. Everything seemed to be in its place. Ben let out a sigh of relief, although the fact remained that he had caused quite a ruckus.
“Who goes there?” a screeching voice demanded. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness and his situation dawned on him, it filled Ben with a sudden, utter dread. He instinctively clasped his mouth with his hands.
He was outside Miss Wormwood’s office, the windows were open, and the light was on. The voice he had just heard belonged to her, and judging from the shadows, Miss Ratworth and Toadwart were there as well.
Ben was awkwardly nestled in the bush under the office window, still as a statue. Under no circumstances could he be caught in such a place. He could imagine the wardens’ accusations—they would call him a gossip, a scandalmonger, a nuisance. It would be a long time before he remedied his hunger. Not that the orphanage’s daily ration of gruel ever did.
All manner of terrible scenarios paraded through his mind as he involuntarily eavesdropped on the caretakers from the diminishing safety of the outside darkness. It was turning out to be an eventful day for Ben.