Chapter Text
A letter of a child to her father at the front, found misfiled in the files of government correspondence.
Dear Daddy
Me and Mummy miss you ever so much. I hope that you are not afraid of the dark over there, since my teacher at school said the front was a dark place. I wanted to send you one of our lamps to keep you safe, but Mummy said it was too big to send. So please find enclosed instead Mr. Snuggle-bear, he always used to help me when I was afraid of the dark. Trust him, he’s a professional.
I’m not afraid of the dark anymore, I’m afraid of what’s waiting in the dark. The animals round our house have become really weird lately. All the dear have gone blind and they keep running into the village smashing through people’s gardens. The badgers have started to swim in the pond and croak like frogs. But most scary of all are the rats.
They’re bigger than they used to be, and at night they line up in the street outside our house and just stare at us. It’s as if they’re waiting for something. But I don’t know what.
Please come home soon Daddy, I’m afraid. I’m very scared of what those rats are gonna do when Mummy steps out that door with a broom to chase them off. I don’t think they’ll let her come back in the house, not alive anyway. You need to come home now, no one else can talk sense into her … she won’t listen to me.
Love you to the Moon
Pippy
***
A letter from a Heiress to a Friend - found in government files
Dear Lawrence
I hope you are doing well in Canada. I miss you every day but I understand, War is a terror even to those of us with the strongest spines.
I could tell you that we haven’t felt the sting of the war effort even back here, at my step-father’s estate in Kent but that would be a lie. The truth is I have seen some things, some terrible things that have even made me doubt my own sense, nay my own sanity.
Stones, large and twisted rising up from the earth as if it were they that were supposed to be here. Not men, not humans or hobbits or any other creatures that crawls and lays claim to the earth now.
I had half convinced myself that such strange obelisks were either a complete fabrication of my own fractured nerves, or like my mother before me I had enhanced the mundane with notions of fantasy too vivid for good sense to dismiss. Stones, even such strange stones as these ones in my dreams, could surely not hurt me - but oh, my dear Lawrence how I had deceived myself. I am not mad, nor one taken for flights of fancy. I saw what I saw.
But what I saw was so mad, so bizarre, that I could not trust my own eyes until that was - it became so outrageous that I just had to admit that I lack the imagination to create such a thing out of nothing.
And this is the part of the tale, where you may indeed call me mad - but I tell you now my friend, that I am sane. I am completely sane.
Down at the bottom of my stepfather’s estate, there lies a stream, a river really that separates our lands, from the neighbouring Button House Grounds. And it was in this river where I first met … him. He told me he used to be a soldier, still was technically - but he couldn’t exactly serve anymore as he had become a monster. A fusion of man and beast, my friend. His top half may have remained the handsome and charming faced man he had been before he was enchanted, but his bottom. That had been stretched, and twisted until it far more resembled the tail of a shark than any appendage of a man.
A told me a witch had done this to him - and I had no reason to doubt him, for I cannot imagine a sensible woman would have changed a man to such a beast.
You see now, that such a sight, such a terror even if it was accompanied by a most pleasant conversation was so bizarre, and so beyond everything I had ever known before - that it could not have come from my own mind.
What I saw real. There is magic in his world of ours,
Write soon my friend - I miss you too much for words to explain.
***
A letter found in a jewellery box of a recently deceased widow
Hello Edgar,
I miss you. But look at me writing those silly words as if they could mean anything at all where you are now. Of course I miss you. I’ve missed you every day since those official men in suits brought me news of your death at the end of the last war.
I miss you Edgar - I miss the feel of you in bed beside me, miss the smell of you, the soft touch of your hand in mind. Thor do I miss sex. But enough of that, you get enough of that from me in my nightly prayers. To be honest I don’t remember those very well the next morning. A lot of things are turning fuzzy these days. But I tell you what’s not, the memories of our picnics. You remember our picnics don’t you Edgar. We’d fill a basket full of jam sandwiches - since neither of us was to put on this earth to cook - and we march up the hill, and have our lunch in front of the stone.
Well, guess what - today I packed that same basket, with those same sandwiches and marched up that same hill. I think part of me was hoping you would hear me better from up there. Maybe finally answer back, you selfish dolt.
The hill has changed since last time we were there, Edgar. Its become so wild and unwelcoming. And the stone on top of the hill, why I could swear it’s grown twice the height it was last time and it’s turned black. As black as coal. It’s like someone’s taken a match and burnt it all up.
Still, I laid out my my blanket, and set up my plate of sandwiches. I had just picked up the first of them, and was getting ready to take a bite when I heard the voice. At first I thought it was yours, silly I know but you know what a doddering old fool I am now. Well, maybe not so much old but certainly doddering. At least I quickly realised my mistake when I saw him emerge from behind the stone. It was the man, the caveman from our childhood games of pretend. The one we convinced ourselves we were coming up here to talk with when we were children.
You remember him, don’t you? The Lightning Man. Well, turns out he’s quite as real as we always told ourselves he was. And you know what happened then, we had a chat, just as lovely as any chat we’d ever had before with him
The soldiers in the house are getting themselves into mischief. He doesn’t like what they’ve done to the stone. I in turn, told him all about my life - small, and sad as it has become. Then when our talk was done we parted ways, he went back down to Button House and me to finish my sandwiches next to the stone.
Edgar, I miss you so much sometimes I think it will split my head in two. But never mind that for soon we shall be together again.
See you soon,
your dear wife
Martha
***
A letter from a soldier at Button House that he’s managed to sneak out with the laundry people to his one true love at her father’s house.
Lizzie,
I’m afraid. Everyday I wake thinking this is the day I loose my life. Or worse, perhaps I shall become like poor Arnolds and be transformed into something so unnatural that I cannot even walk amongst men anymore.
Literally, Arnolds has a tail instead of feet now and has to spend the rest of his life splashing around the rivers of Kent. So if you ever hear tell that the Kent freshwater monster has acquired a friend, pray that it is not your beloved.
Everywhere I walk in this house strange noises follow me, and a deep feeling of unease hangs over my head. I can almost hear people speak at the corners of doorways but when I step into the room proper, there’s never anyone there.
And then there is the witch, she’s always there just behind the elbow of the Captain, smiling at as the men, watching us.
Somethings I think about asking the Captain to do something about her, but I know it is a foolish notion. I am only a private and just here to carry out the work the others won’t touch. But she is a fearsome creature.
She caught me by myself one day, while I was peeling potatoes. I looked down and she was suddenly just there. Smiling at me. She didn’t say anything, she just stood there in front of me smiling. Laughing. Like she could see something in my future that I couldn’t. Something horrible. Something that she found funny. Don’t know what it could be.
Pray for me, my love
Your ever loving fiancé
Private H. Cassandra
***
A letter from the Captain to his second in command newly at the front.
Havers, we are missing you dearly here at Button House. But of course we all understand, you’re doing important, needed work at the front.
Not like here.
No, no, no - I swore to myself that I would not fill this letter with misery and complaints. But I have to say Havers, the house is not the same without you. It’s so much more quiet, strange as that seems to be.
The men are losing faith in me - and who can blame them, I have lost my faith in me. I let that witch into the house, I stand by while she does her spells. Spells that are having a terrible affect on the men.
Arnolds lost his humanity, and poor Private Casandra lost his mind. Although the Witch claims he’s a seer now, but I’m not so sure, I’ve never seen anything he’s said come to past.
Told me right to my face, that I’d die here. Lying on the ground convulsing from a double heart attack. It was rather embarrassing, he was convinced my spirit would be trapped in this house. Had to tell him to go lie down, he had worked himself into such a state. Then he told the witch that the child she was carrying - yes she’s pregnant now - would be a boy. That he would be powerful, but with a stupid mouth, that could never still itself even before the most dangerous of his enemies. And all would be his enemies in the end.
I’m not entirely sure what he expected her to do with this information - other than raise the child with some deference to authority perhaps, but I think that quite beyond her. He said he had a dream about you, but I could not bear to hear it so I sent him to digging latrines.
He’s done it before, it’s fine. I feel we’re all going a little mad right now, and I can’t wait until this experiment - this magic that makes the air so heavy and hot against my skin - is over and done with. I cannot wait until this war is over and done with.
I miss you Havers, we all do. I wish …. I wish you were here. Your presence is calming to the men. And they need a little of that now. This will be my last letter in a while, someone smuggled out a letter with a little too much information and now we are banned from saying anything at all.
Goodby, Havers. I … we all miss you dearly.