Trilby's Notes: The (Un)Official Novelization (Chzo Mythos #3)

Chapter 7: The Woodcutter

Clanbronwyn Island, July 28th, AD 1501

       "A sturdy tree, this. It took us from dawn to dusk, but we finally have it down."

       Boyle and his father had left his village early and headed to Clanbronwyn Island. Boyle's father was a strong man, yet it seemed Boyle hadn't taken after him at all. 

       "I'm tired, father."

       "'Twas indeed clever of us to investigate this island, eh, boy? I have never seen such a gigantic oak, now do I expect to again. But it's wood shall keep us in the business of carpentry for years to come!"

       Boyle's father often overlooked Boyle's thoughts and opinions, believing brute force to be the only way to live. However, his father still insisted on making him come on woodcutting excursions and help with carpentry instead of going to school as Boyle had wished.

       "Father, look at those stones. Do you think there was once a house here?"

       "It matters not! Why must you always look everywhere but at what matters? This is your-"

       Boyle's father stopped and froze, not a speck of movement in his body.

       "Father?"

       Suddenly, Boyle's father dropped the axe.

       "I-Is something troubling you, father?" Boyle knew something was wrong. His father was a stout and serious man, not one for jokes or games. And that was when his father began to float upward. Boyle's father was raised into the air, blood dripping out from within him, and Boyle froze in panic. A tall, cloaked figure threw his father down to the ground and began to spear his corpse over and over. Boyle knew not what to do, but he looked for any way he could stop this and save himself. He found a stone on the ground, a good, hefty size, and picked it up. Boyle threw the stone at the tall man's head with perfect aim and the tall man stopped spearing his father. The tall man looked at Boyle, yet he had no eyes. Boyle dropped to his knees, weeping, and the tall man disappeared.

       Suddenly, I was not at the Clanbronwyn, but in the basement of DeFoe Manor. My legs chained to the shackles where John DeFoe had spent his short, miserable life, the welder appeared at the landing and began to walk towards me. 

       Father, why?

       I strained against my restraints, and he came closer and closer to me. 

       It hurts.

       He was right by me now, yet I couldn't even speak. 

       Father, why?

       He raised his machete and began to slice into me.

       "Whuh...where am I?"

       I was back at the Clanbronwyn, the sky around me now orange. "I must have shifted into the dark world during the vision..."

       "Trilby!" A familiar voice called to me, and I noticed quickly that it was Siobhan.

       "Siobhan?"

       "Oh thank god, I thought I was all alone!"

       "Siobhan, what happened to you?!"

       "I don't know! After you...knocked me out in my room, I woke up and everything was like this. The hotel's ruined, there's blood everywhere. I saw this horrible man!"

       "Tall, thin, long black coat?"

       "You know him?!"

       "Enough to know you're lucky to be alive."

       "He didn't notice me, so I ran up here to hide."

       "How did you get past the doll?"

       "What doll? Trilby, what the hell is going on?"

       "I told you what would happen if you followed me into the shadows. This isn't your problem. Take these." I handed her the bottle of tranquillizers.

       "What are these?"

       "Tranquillizer pills. Take one. When you calm down, the hotel will go back to normal."

       "Won't you need them?"

       "I don't need to run away anymore."

       "Trilby, wait! Where are you going?"

       "I know enough now. I know where the wood came from. Perhaps I can find a way to end this."

       I exited through the door, and suddenly I was on the other side of the doll and there was no door in sight. 

       "So I was right. The cursed wood came from Clanbronwyn Island. But what good does that knowledge do me?... Wait a second, I never got around to reading that letter I got from under that rock."

"Trilby,

I am very close to ending this. Meet me in the hotel basement. I must show you my discovery.

Lenkmann"

       The other page was another of those religious papers.

"The Book of Victims

Victim 1: The Woodcutter

1. The first of those against whom the Prince sought vengeance was the Woodcutter, he who had held the axe that first fell the Tree. The Prince came to him and his son, and struck the Woodcutter down, and the Woodcutter knew the name of the King.

2. And the Prince turned to the Woodcutter's son, and he said 'You I shall let live, for you are young and are of the innocent, and that you may go among your people and tell them of what I will wrought.'

3. And the Woodcutter's son fled, and told all of what he had seen, but the Men of Technology are arrogant and his words were unheeded."

       I didn't know what to draw of these papers and their sudden appearance alongside Lenkmann's letters. I made my way back through the alternate hotel, my stomach rolling as I passed the bar, and made my way back to the cellar. The beetles were gone from the cellar, and someone had dug a hole in the foundations, large enough to admit a man. I climbed inside, and within the new cavern was a tree stump with a strange sigil of four triangles surrounding each side of a square on it in what I presumed to be blood. Chains hung from the ceiling, blood splattered the walls. Perhaps this cavern had been used for rituals. But then, suddenly, it was all gone and the world was pleasant yet again. Dirt fell from the ceiling on occasion, and Lenkmann was nowhere in sight. This, this stump, it must have had something to do with the reality shifts. This was it, I was certain. The remains of the tree that Boyle and his father cut down, its wood being later used to construct an inn, a harpsichord, a shipping crate, and an idol. I could feel that same scrabbling in my mind that I had felt just before all of my visions. This time it was the stump itself that seemed to be beckoning me closer.