Chapter 20

The next day, after everyone had rested, the crew of the Chenodia was surprised when the nearby townsfolk of Karlaca came to the docks, led by Mayor Laurio himself along with some of the others the crew had met the previous day. Some of the crewmen were on the alert but when Prince Gaius and Captain Meralco came out to see them, it soon became apparent that they wanted no trouble. They had only come to talk about the events of the recent evening.

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Mayor Laurio the lemming, Reuben the monkey tavernkeeper and the water buffalo woman that Beryl and her group had met yesterday came aboard the Chenodia and the rest of the townspeople left. The three guests were brought to Prince Gaius’ own quarters inside the ship, accompanied by Captain Meralco. The Prince’s bodyguards were on guard, but they were somewhat relaxed as they didn’t really expect trouble from Karlaca’s mayor and two elderly townspeople who came with him.

“I think it’s time we told you the truth,” the lemming mayor said. “Yesterday, we were too frightened to talk about what really happened on the island. But then we heard what happened last night and we decided that perhaps it’s time we told you about what’s going on around here. After all, based on what we know, you are probably the first people to not just survive an encounter with the dark forces of this island, but have stayed until after dawn. Most would have left by now. We take it that there’s something that is prompting you to stay on our island?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact there is,” Gaius said. “Count Belford has some unique equipment that we need. A diving bell, if you know what that is, and algae tanks that we can use for diving. He is perhaps the only person in Pyril with that kind of equipment.”

“Count Belford has countless strange devices in his possession,” Mayor Laurio said. “I wouldn’t at all be surprised if he had a device that could enable an entire city to fly or a machine that can travel to the past as well as the future. But that is not all that the count has accumulated over the years. Necromancy, black magic, dark sorcery, he has been practicing it for almost half a century now. And, last night, you saw for yourself the curse he has brought upon Karlaca.”

“So tell us, how did this all start?” Gaius asked as he sat and leaned back on one of his couches. “What was Count Belford like when he first came to your island.”

“In that case,” Mayor Laurio smiled. “It should be Reuben you should be asking. His father was my predecessor. I have only been mayor here for the last ten years. Elijah Arete was mayor of Karlaca for more than fiftyy years until his death a decade ago.”

Gaius and Beryl looked at the old monkey who only smiled at them.

“It starts with me then,” Reuben the monkey said. “Count Joseph Belford came to Karlaca more fifty years ago. I was just a boy then, surprised at all the things that I saw. When I first saw the count, when my father welcomed him to our island, I saw nothing strange about him at all. He came with his wife Nadia and his daughter Wendy and they seemed like a happy family to me. At least at first anyway.

“It wouldn’t be until later that we would discover just what kind of person Count Belford was. Wendy and I played a lot when we were children. The forest surrounding the Belford Mansion was once just an open field in the tall grass. We’d play there, she and I. We’d pretend we were soldiers, keeping a lookout for the enemy. Or maybe constables, seeking to protect the good people from criminals. However, even then, I began to feel how alone she was.

“Then, one day, she asked me if my father had ever hit my mother. This shocked me and I answered that of course not, my father would never do such a thing. How could he? When he loved my mother like his own mother. I was too young to understand then but I slowly began to understand that Count Belford was neither a good husband nor a good father to his family.

“I remember the last day that Wendy and I played together. Her father came out to tell her to come into the house in an angry voice. I saw him then and saw something in his eyes that I wouldn’t be able to understand until I got older. It was a look of not just anger, but of malice and madness as well.

“But from there, I saw little of Wendy and her family again. It would be best you talk to the mayor here. His father, Bernardo, was the last sheriff of Karlaca. I believe he can paint you a clearer picture of what happened next.”

The old mayor sighed as both Gaius and Beryl turned to him.

“My father was a serious man,” Laurio said. “He was very honest too. If he didn’t like a person, he told them off the bat. Count Belford was one of those people whom he didn’t like off the bat.

“There was, as Reuben here says, his maltreatment of his wife and daughter. But since Mrs. Belford pressed no charges against the man, there was little my father could do at the time. My father often worried that Count Belford might one day cause serious harm to his family but nothing ever really came of it. At least, until later on anyway.

“Then there were the strange cases of people reporting a shadowy figure lurking about the town. He was described as a jackal and often dressed in a hooded cloak. He was often sighted at cemeteries in the dead of night, digging up graves.

“My father didn’t believe it at first. He thought that they were just stories. That people were probably just drunk on coconut vodka or weeds.

“But what he wasn’t prepared for was when he saw the thing at work. He was on his way home one night when he saw a shadowy figure move through the streets towards the local cemetery. Intrigued, he followed the figure and saw it at the graveyard digging up bodies and using crude tools to remove body parts and organs like arms, legs, livers and hearts.

“He shouted at the figure who only ran in response. My father didn’t get a clear view of the man but he had the silhouette of a dog, wolf or any sort of canine. He was devilishly fast too. My father had never seen anything move so quickly in his career as sheriff of Karlaca.

“The next day, he came to see the count at Belford Mansion. He had reason to suspect that the figure he had seen was actually the count himself. When he arrived, he discovered that there seemed to be no one there. He searched up and down the apparently empty mansion but found no one and nothing of note.

“He returned to town and learned from Pietro the bat, Count Belford’s valet, that the count and his family had sailed away on the ship the Sea Moth, early in the morning. Disappointed, my father thought about returning to the Belford Mansion later on and gather evidence against the count but then discovered that the place had become haunted and terrifyingly so. It seemed that the place had become infested with evil spirits and restless ghosts. Of the four men he had come in with to the mansion, only one managed to return with him to town.

“My father was an old man when he died, and he told me all this as he lay dying. He told me that the count had somehow placed a curse on the island of Karlaca. He said that the ghosts that infested the mansion would one day come for us here in town. My mother, at the time, thought it only silly talk. Of course, none of us ever thought that things would turn out the way they did.

“So when did it start?” Beryl asked. “When did the dead start attacking the living in Karlaca? Did it start right after your father died? Or did it only start recently?”

“The dead started becoming a problem to the living after I became mayor of Karlaca almost twenty years ago now,” Mayor Laurio said. “It started off barely noticeable. People would mention seeing strange people in the night that they thought were dead. The mists you saw mostly stayed within the forests outside back then. And we were mostly safe as long as we kept torches burning into the night. But then things started to change and certainly not for the better.

“The mist began to invade the town and, in places where we didn’t keep the torches burning, the dead would appear, seeking living victims,” the old lemming shook his head. “We did our best to stand vigil against the horrors that came from Belford Mansion, but we could only do so much.”

“What did you do then?” Gaius said, curious.

“Well, I do not think I should be telling the rest of this story,” Mayor Laurio said. “I think it is your turn, Medina.”

The water buffalo woman only looked at the lemming mayor with an expression of sadness.